The Daily Agenda: A clearer view of Tucson is on the horizon
The city's new data strategy goes deep ... We'll see who's left out when tax dollars rain down ... Kerfuffle over rooftop solar credits.
Tucsonans could get a much better view of themselves once a City of Tucson data strategy takes shape.
City officials are developing the Tucson Equity Data Strategy to give officials and the public a detailed view of the demographics of areas as small as a few city blocks. With that data, they can figure out who needs more public transit, more shade, or any number of other services.
This is an intriguing project. We’re big fans of data and what it can teach us, so we rooted around in the website the city put together to explain what they’re trying to do with their new strategy. (The data itself isn’t publicly available yet and likely won’t be for at least a few months)
The equity data strategy involves gathering a wide array of information, including Census data and surveys of residents with questions about age, race, income, car ownership, and various other issues. Officials then turn that data into easy-to-understand infographics.
“Users can draw an area on a map, create a distance or travel-time buffer around a point, or select a pre-existing area (e.g., neighborhood, ward) and instantly obtain a variety of attractive and dynamic City-branded infographics and reports on various topics such as general demographics, commute times, and employment overviews that can be downloaded or printed,” city officials wrote in the introduction to the data strategy project.
What caught our eye was a profile of the Sam Hughes neighborhood created by the city’s Office of Equity. They’re using it as an example of what can be done with their Census Infographic and Report Tool.
It became immediately apparent to us that we could do quite a bit with data like that. First and foremost, we could track where tax dollars are spent in the city and show whether city officials are complying with their stated goal of increasing equity.
This is how city officials described their equity goals with regard to the data strategy project:
“Tucson is dedicated to achieving equity by promoting fairness in service delivery, hiring, and access to decision-making, identifying who is burdened and benefited by policies, and measuring equity outcomes.”
The new data strategy will help city officials determine whether they are meeting those goals, or as Laura Sharp, data analytics project manager at the city’s Office of Equity, said in a May 24 presentation about the strategy:
“Who is being left out and how can we change that?”
A lot of money flows through the city government. The city has a $2.2 billion budget this year. Other measures, such as the sales taxes that fund the Regional Transportation Authority and Prop 411 projects, will bring in hundreds of millions of dollars for roads and other public projects.
On top of that, the federal government is sending a tsunami of cash to cities across the country via the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure law. As Mayor Regina Romero noted in her Aug. 18 newsletter, the detailed data gathered under the Tucson Data Equity Strategy “will give Tucson an edge when applying for federal dollars.”
We’d like nothing more than to dig into how your tax dollars are spent. How about upgrading to a paid subscription so we can stick around long enough to do it?
The need for this kind of data jumped out at us when we wrote about the city’s Storm-to-Shade program last month and came across the city’s Tree Equity map.
It was one of those things that once we saw it, we couldn’t un-see it. The north side has such a higher “tree equity score” than anywhere else in the city.
If you want to put more trees in the city, as Romero is trying do with the Tucson Million Trees project, the obvious move would be to focus on areas where there are fewer trees, such as the south side or east side.
But city officials divvied up funds for the Storm-to-Shade projects by ward, rather than targeting areas that needed more trees. So Ward 6, which has a ton of trees, got the same funding as other wards that have far fewer trees.
That doesn’t make a lot of sense and we’re hoping the Equity Data Strategy will help officials sidestep that issue with other projects.
So far, the attitude behind the equity data strategy seems encouraging. We especially appreciated the way city officials described the infographic tool:
“This tool will be ideal for casual users who need quick summary information about an area and requires no previous knowledge about data or analysis.”
That is music to our ears. The other day, we highlighted the data dashboards created by the Pima County Office of the Medical Examiner as an example for other agencies to follow. The main reason was that those dashboards were designed for regular people to use, rather than policy wonks or highly trained researchers.
We need more of that at all levels of government. If city officials follow through on their new data strategy, then they’d take a solid step in that direction and Tucsonans could have a much clearer view of their city and how their tax dollars are spent.
Not so equitable: University of Arizona researchers have created an online map tracking Tucson’s history of race-restricted neighborhoods, the Arizona Daily Star’s Henry Brean reports. The Mapping Racist Covenants project tracked and examined covenants, conditions and restrictions for more than 750 subdivisions in and around the city and found that more than one quarter of those neighborhoods had rules prohibiting nonwhite residents.
Taking a stance: Local and state leaders met in Tucson Thursday for a reproductive rights roundtable moderated by former Arizona state legislator and candidate for Arizona’s 6th Congressional District Kirsten Engel, according to a news release from her campaign. Mayor Regina Romero and Pima County Supervisor Adelita Grijalva were among the participants, who highlighted the need to champion abortion access and elect pro-choice Democratic leaders. The discussion came on the heels of Wednesday’s news that the Arizona Supreme Court will decide whether to reinstate a pre-statehood law that effectively bans all abortion.
“When the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision was leaked, our city sprung into action to protect access to abortion services and reproductive health care,” Romero said. “I am proud of the work we have accomplished in the City of Tucson to defend each of our rights to make decisions about our own bodies.”
Staffing increase at the border: The Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector has received additional employees from Homeland Security, as it continues to experience a surge in migrants, Arizona Public Media’s Danyelle Khmara reports. And while most single adult migrants are being put in detention as a deterrent, children and families are not. The sector is averaging nearly 1,600 people per day.
We’d like to increase our staff at the Tucson Agenda, too. If you upgrade to a paid subscription, we could do it a whole lot sooner.
The people’s court: The number of Green Valley residents seeking protective orders against each other has increased in 2023, writes the Green Valley News’ Kim Smith. In 2022, 10 people obtained orders of protection in Green Valley Justice Court and eight others obtained an injunction against harassment. During the first seven months of this year, 12 orders of protection and 10 injunctions were granted. Documents showed a variety of circumstances.
Change in solar credits: New Tucson Electric Power rooftop-solar customers will see 10% lower credits for excess energy they export to the grid, the Star’s David Wichner reports. The Arizona Corporation Commission voted Thursday to approve the new rates, but they put off until October a discussion about changes to the solar export credits after hearing concerns from advocates that further cuts could devastate the industry and others who said credits are unfairly subsidized by other customers.
115: The projected high temperature for some areas this afternoon and tomorrow. It looks like the summer isn’t done with us yet.
Really appreciated Henry Brean's article about racist language in CCR's around Tucson. Thanks for linking to it. For an appreciation of racist housing policy all over the U.S. I highly recommend The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein. Well-researched and explained, it's a sobering look at how racist housing policy was written into not only CCR's but also local, state, and federal law, and the negative impacts it has had and continues to have on minority populations and white folks.