The Daily Agenda: New Rio Nuevo board takes first steps

They held their first meeting yesterday … What do they actually do? … Rainwater harvesting shop opens.

When Gov. Katie Hobbs replaced four members of the Rio Nuevo board last month with her own appointees, the ousted longtime board members were taken by surprise and lawmakers fired back by reappointing two of them.

The appointment scuffle even prompted the Tucson Metro Chamber to issue a “business advocacy alert,” saying they were concerned Hobbs was trying to intervene, even though the Rio Nuevo board wasn’t “broken.”

After all the political maneuvering, the board now has all nine members for the first time since 2012, including four Democrats, four Republicans and an independent. 

That’s all well and good. A little political intrigue is fascinating. But what does the board — which held its first meeting including its new members yesterday — actually do?

If you’re like many Tucsonans, the words “Rio Nuevo” are vaguely associated with downtown, and possibly “scandal” if you’ve lived here long enough. 

Officially, Rio Nuevo is a “tax increment finance district,” approved by voters in 1999. Basically, the board takes a share of state sales tax dollars from businesses that operate in the district, which runs from Interstate 10 on Congress Street, through downtown, and down Broadway Blvd. all the way to Park Place Mall. 

The board reinvests that money, which usually tops $1 million every month, and uses it to help businesses in the district grow. The goal is to help Tucson “compete with cities like Austin, Portland and San Diego for citizens and tourists seeking an urban destination,” per Rio Nuevo’s website.

The new appointees, Corky Poster, Sharayah Jimenez, Richard Oseran, and Taunya Villicana, along with Fletcher McCusker, who was already on the board and Hobbs reappointed, joined Chris Sheafe, Edmund Marquez, Jannie Cox, and Mike Levin for the new board’s first meeting yesterday.

They’re arriving amid a long effort to rebuild Rio Nuevo’s reputation. The Rio Nuevo board became synonymous with scandal in the 2000s when the board spent $77 million, with little to show for it, and the board’s finances and record-keeping were such a shambles that law enforcement officials couldn’t even figure out what had happened.

Yesterday, Lydia Hunter of the accounting firm Beach Fleischman issued the board a clean bill of financial health as she presented the annual audit, making it about a decade since the board had shady finances. 

Today, they have a $17 million budget for fiscal 2024. So how do they spend all that money?

The owners of the Miss Saigon restaurants made their pitch yesterday for funding to convert the site of a former bar into a restaurant, complete with a cherry tree on a wall. They wanted help from the board with half of the costs, which came to several hundred thousand dollars. The board members peppered them with questions about leases, timelines, and construction costs, before giving them the green light.

This was a pretty typical conversation, we found after going through some of the board’s meeting agendas and transcripts since the start of the year. The board is working with the owner of the Welcome Diner on Broadway, for example, to develop the land around the diner. 

They also spent $5.6 million on a Caterpillar project and $900,000 helping Hotel Congress upgrade its patio. One of their biggest projects was the massive renovation of the Tucson Convention Center, which included $65 million authorized by the board.

But the board doesn’t just deal with developers and business owners. 

Last year, they authorized paying off-duty Tucson police officers to patrol downtown until about 10:30 at night. Yesterday, the board approved spending $90,000 on two ATV-like vehicles that would allow officers to zip around downtown and respond to late-night incidents faster. They also discussed the valet parking arrangements for the Toole block at their August meeting.

As for what’s next for the board, yesterday’s meeting didn’t have a lot of forward-looking statements. The only exception was McCusker saying he wants the board to create a master plan, instead of being “mostly reactive.” The way it works now is a developer comes to the board with an idea and the board helps them “nurse it along,” he said. 

Their next meeting is Dec. 19 at 1:00 p.m. The meetings are all virtual, so any member of the public who’s interested can attend. 

In the meantime, you can play around with the “expense ledger” tool on the Rio Nuevo website and see how all that money was spent. 

More art for Tucson: A larger, new University of Arizona Museum of Art is coming to Tucson in 2027 and will be located at the northwest corner of Speedway and Vine, the Arizona Luminaria’s Noor Haghighi reports. The UA says it’s secured funding for the 50,000-square-foot building — more than twice the size of the museum’s current 20,000-square-foot museum — and says the process has been started to hire an architect, who should be chosen in early 2024. The UA’s current art museum is in a building on Olive Road and shares space and facilities with several other departments.

Lasting legacy: The Tucson Sentinel’s Blake Morlock writes that Pima County Supervisor Sharon Bronson’s upcoming retirement marks the end of an era for a leader who helped shape Pima County. Bronson has served constituents in western Pima County, Ajo, Why and Sells since 1996. Morlock takes readers through the history of her repeated victories over the years in what he says has been the most reliable swing district in the county. 

Election reflection: The Arizona Daily Star’s Tim Steller reflects on voters’ strong support for the Democrats holding office and the ballot issues they supported during last week’s city election, with each of the four winning candidates taking a bigger percentage of the vote this time around than they did four years ago. Steller says that the results mean that some of the most controversial policies from this council, including housing first, fare-free transit and climate adaptation strategies, will likely continue.

Traffic alert: The 40th Annual El Tour de Tucson will cause road closures galore downtown and other parts of the city Friday and Saturday. There are too many to print in our limited space, but the El Tour website and City of Tucson news release have more information about the closures and additional traffic restrictions associated with the event. All roadways are scheduled to reopen Saturday by 5 p.m.

Busy border: The U.S. Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector continues to be the busiest in the United States, but federal and local officials say they’re still able to manage the influx, Arizona Public Media’s Danyelle Khmara reports. Sector Chief John Modlin said in a tweet that agents near San Miguel, on the Tohono O’odham Nation, encountered two separate groups of about 1,000 migrants and previously tweeted that the sector is at the forefront of the southwest border’s migration surge.

Harvesting hub: A new shop to help people harvest rainwater is now open in central Tucson, the Star’s Gabriela Rico reports. The Rain Store offers rainwater harvesting tanks, low-water irrigation systems, native seeds and garden beds, in partnership with Thrive and Grow Gardens. The store is meant for do-it-yourself and professional harvesters and will also have information for customers about growing their own food and other sustainability matters.

30: The most optimistic percent chance of rain in Tucson over the next few days.