The Daily Agenda: Council pay raise does its job
Voters gave the Tucson City Council a big salary boost last year ... Now two council members are quitting their other jobs ... Robbins says he's leaving UA.
When voters were asked to give the Tucson City Council a big pay raise last year, part of the pitch was that it was a full-time job, but they were only paid a part-time salary.
The pitch worked. Voters signed off on Prop 413 in November and the mayor’s pay more than doubled to $96,000, while a council member’s pay tripled to $76,000. Next year, those salaries will jump again to $121,000 for the mayor and $96,000 for the council.
In light of the pay raises, a Tucson Agenda reader brought up a good question: Now that they’re getting a full-time salary, shouldn’t the council be their only full-time job?
The pay has been so bad for so long —last year’s raise was the first one since 1999— it was common for council members to work other jobs to make ends meet. In fact, another part of the pitch to voters was that only people who already had a solid income or personal wealth could afford to serve on the council.
We checked with the council members and it looks like the pay raise is doing what backers hoped it’d do. Two council members already decided to quit their other jobs and focus completely on their council work.
Councilwoman Nikki Lee said working on the city council is “now my full-time job.” She left her previous job at the Arbinger Institute in December when the pay raise kicked in.
The raises “have been so impactful in terms of giving me the ability to focus exclusively on our work at the city versus having to divide my time and attention between city business and another full-time job,” Lee said. “I have been able to do so much more and dig so much deeper now that I have the gift of being able to focus on one job.”
Councilman Paul Cunningham teaches at Gridley Middle School in Tucson. He said the pay raise is “100%” the reason he is going to leave that job.
“I’m going to finish up the school year,” he said. “If I return to teaching next year it will be in a very limited capacity.”
As for the rest of the council, Mayor Regina Romero said even before the pay raise her job as mayor took up all her time, although she also does some consulting work for the Center for Biological Diversity.
“Since being elected in 2019, I have proudly served Tucsonans 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” Romero said.
Council member Lane Santa Cruz didn’t get back to us about her job situation.
Councilman Richard Fimbres and Vice Mayor Kevin Dahl are both retired.
“I don’t have an outside job because I retired shortly after taking office, as I had planned,” Dahl said. “That is why I was able to run in the first place. I supported the pay raise because it gives other people the opportunity to run for office, not just those who have another source of income.”
Former Councilman Steve Kozachik worked at the University of Arizona for many of his years on the council. He recently got a full-time job at Pima County, helping with the Mosaic Quarter project. He decided to resign from the council, effective March 31.
We don’t know the job situation of Kozachik’s replacement yet. The city is accepting applications until April 15.
And that brings up another interesting question about the pay raises: Who is going to apply to replace Kozachik? Will we see familiar faces, or will the higher pay open the door to people who ruled out serving on the council because the old salary wasn’t enough to support themselves or their families?
Calling it quits: University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins announced in a Tuesday email to employees and students that he’d be stepping down at the end of his current contract, or sooner, if the Arizona Board of Regents hires someone before June 30, 2026. ABOR Chair Cecilia Mata said in a statement that the board will launch a national search for the next president and “the search will move forward with expediency.”
Medical update: U.S. Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva said Tuesday that he’s being treated for cancer, after seeking treatment for a persistent cough that he initially believed was pneumonia, the Tucson Sentinel’s Dylan Smith reports. Grijalva, who has not cast a vote in Congress since February, did not release many details about his diagnosis, saying only that “after further testing and imaging, my physician discovered that I have cancer." Grijalva said in the news release that he’s confident in his “vigorous course of treatment.”
Learning from the past: Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher says that a new commission tasked with reexamining jail reform will take into account past criminal justice reform efforts, Arizona Public Media’s Hannah Cree reports. The Pima County Criminal Justice Reform Advisory Commission was formed in 2018, but its work was interrupted in 2020 by the pandemic. Lesher wrote in a memo to supervisors that she was assembling a new commission of 15 to 20 county staffers to continue the efforts of the 2018 commission in combination with the Blue Ribbon Commission’s recent findings.
Improving access: A new farmer’s market is up and running in Tucson, helping to provide lower-income residents with fresh, local produce, This is Tucson’s Jamie Donnelly writes. The PLAZA Mobile Market sets up every Wednesday in front of the Valencia LIbrary and is run by members of the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension’s Garden Kitchen program. PLAZA, which stands for “promoting local AZ agriculture,” hosted its first market in January and sells produce and citrus at half the market price.
Short timer: Cochise County Elections Director Tim Mattix is resigning from the position, effective April 20, KVOA’s Myles Standish writes. Mattix was appointed to the role in October 2023 and just oversaw the 2024 Presidential Preference Election and Hand Count Audit. A news release from the county says Mattix is departing for personal family reasons and comes with regret, as he had hoped to provide stability for the elections department through the 2024 election season.
Career connections: Sunnyside Unified School District is expanding its CommunityShare program to all schools within the district, Arizona Sonoran News’ Refugio Del Cid reports. The program helps prepare students for careers in technology and related fields by providing them with opportunities like field trips and networking with current and retired professionals, including architects, engineers, conservationists and others. The program is currently active in 11 of the district’s 18 elementary and middle schools.
24: The ranking for last month’s weather in Tucson. It was the 24th wettest March on record and the wettest since 1998.
