The Daily Agenda: Tucson council wades into Gaza conflict, budget outlook OK-ish

Public pressure is mounting for the council to call for a ceasefire ... Still no word on sales tax election ... Six sign up to replace Kozachik.

This week’s batch of news nuggets comes from tomorrow’s Tucson City Council meeting and last week’s presentation by an Amphi school official to the Oro Valley Town Council.

The Tucson City Council might approve a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. They would be the second local government body to do so, after the South Tucson City Council passed a similar resolution last month. The council has been under some pressure to weigh in on the conflict. At the March 19 council meeting, Tucson residents spoke for more than an hour at call-to-the-public about the Israel-Hamas conflict. Some said the council had a moral obligation to condemn Israel’s actions, while others defended Israel or said the council should stay out of it altogether. At the study session that evening, Council member Lane Santa Cruz asked that the resolution be put on the agenda for tomorrow’s meeting.

“It is my hope that the City of Tucson Mayor and Council can express the urgent need for an immediate ceasefire to our congressional delegation and, ultimately, the Biden administration,” Santa Cruz wrote in a memo.

As budget deadlines loom, the council is still trying to find a way to keep public transportation free. At their March 5 meeting, they asked staff to see whether they could come up with the money through state lottery funds, the local bed tax, or a tax on rental cars. It looks like the only option that could work is the Hotel/Motel Surcharge, which is $4 a night. They can raise the tax rate and use the money for “any general fund purpose,” City Manager Mike Ortega wrote in a memo for tomorrow’s meeting, noting the city already uses $2 million of it for transit.

As for the other ideas, state law blocks them from imposing a citywide tax on rental cars, so that is “not a viable option for funding transit.” Years ago, the city used state lottery funds to pay for local transit projects, but the Legislature took those funds off the table in 2011. Maricopa County got that funding stream back, and the Tucson council said they were going to do the same, but “those efforts never materialized.”

Ortega is going to present his recommended budget for next year tomorrow. Last month, he said he was “very confident” that the upcoming year’s budget will be “structurally balanced.” But he expects a shortfall of $24 million in fiscal 2026 and $18 million the next year. The good news is local sales tax revenue is up and city spending is on track. The bad news is state-shared income tax revenue is down. Ortega also pointed out city departments made $100 million in supplemental requests, and only a few can be included in next year’s budget. The rest will have to be handled at a later date. The council will adopt the final budget in June.

We’ll be right there following along as the council figures out the budget. That’s worth a cup of coffee, right? A monthly subscription doesn’t cost much more than that, so why not upgrade and help us stick around?

The council didn’t put anything on the agenda regarding the sales tax election they scheduled for July 30. Council members have alluded to the sales tax being a way for the city to go it alone on transportation projects, rather than join what they see as an unfair funding formula for the nine jurisdictions in RTA Next. The council now has less than three months (ballots go out July 3 and most people vote early) to figure out what exactly they want in the proposition, draft and fine-tune the language, approve it, and convince voters it’s a good idea to add a half-cent to the sales tax they’ll pay for however many years.

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Over in Oro Valley, the town council heard about the financial troubles of the Amphitheater Unified School District from Superintendent Todd Jaeger.

A bit of good news was that the town’s recent $100,000 contribution allowed the district to expand their preschool programs, an area where they receive no state funding, Jaeger said. That state funding, particularly the loss of it, was a key point Jaeger drove home during his presentation.

“We have had tremendous budget cuts in our state, and sometimes we hear that, but we don’t understand the scope of it,” Jaeger said.

The district’s capital budget was cut by 90% over the past decade and it’s been a long time since state funding kept up with inflation, he said. Without that money, the district has a hard time recruiting staff and paying for transportation for students. Those transportation costs are “extraordinarily high” for Amphi schools, Jaeger said, because the district covers 110 square miles and they depend on third-party contractors to meet their bus-driving needs.

Amphi officials are considering putting a bond on the local ballot in November, given the long-running cuts in state funding. They need the money to meet numerous needs, such as covering costs for air conditioning, computers, and school buses, as well as continuing to support the district’s all-day kindergarten program, Jaeger said. District officials also are considering putting a pool in at Ironwood Ridge High School and making “other improvements to our facilities that could potentially benefit the public more broadly,” Jaeger said.

Making the connection: Tucson Police Chief Chad Kasmar penned an opinion piece for the Arizona Daily Star, talking about the importance of high-quality early childhood education as a strategy for crime prevention. Kasmar wrote that many of the city’s public safety challenges have roots that can be traced to childhood and that he’s seen compelling evidence that supports the connection between early childhood education and reduced crime rates. Kasmar said that investing in education and ensuring the availability of quality child care are key to the city’s future.

Stiff competition: Six Ward 6 residents are vying to finish out Steve Kozachik’s term as councilman, with several familiar names on the list, the Tucson Sentinel’s Jim Nintzel writes. As of April 3, applicants include Nina Trasoff, Ted Prezelski, Pamela Powers, Alejandro Terrrazas, Avi Erbst and Charlie Verdin. The deadline to apply is April 15 and all applicants must be members of the Democratic Party, a registered voter in the city for at least three years and a registered voter in the Midtown ward for at least one year. Kozachik’s term runs through the end of 2025.

Digging deeper: Pima County officials defended their decision to charter yet another committee to look into the problems at the Pima County jail, saying that information about who is in the jail and why has been hard to come by, the Arizona Luminaria’s John Washington writes. County Administrator Jan Lesher wants the new committee to explore how to reduce the jail populations and conduct a larger review of the criminal justice system, including possible procedural changes. County staff has until August 1 to complete their research.

Eclipse tips: KVOA’s Sarika Sood has all the details for Tucsonans planning to watch today’s total solar eclipse. The eclipse will start at about 10:08 a.m., when the sky will darken as if it were dusk or dawn. It will pass over Mexico, the U.S. and Canada, with Southern Arizona’s best viewing areas being Douglas, Willcox and Cochise County. The eclipse will only be at its best for a few minutes and won’t be very noticeable when it first starts. To find out where you can see the eclipse, visit NASA’s website.

Coming soon: Construction on Tucson’s first shaded skate park, which will be located west of downtown, is set to begin in September, This is Tucson’s Elvia Verdugo reports. The park will be built in a vacant lot off Cushing Street below the Interstate 10 overpass and will include a cactus-shaped pump bump, a pool coping pocket, rails, ledges and a mural wall. The park was first pitched at a Tucson City Council meeting in 2016 and after numerous delays, community efforts to get it back on track ramped up again over the past year.

Grim reality: Cochise County is preparing to launch its Navigate 360 program that will allow county schools to share information with law enforcement, Arizona Public Media’s Summer Hom writes. The sheriff’s office was awarded a $1.5 million grant to create a school safety program that includes a communication system between schools and law enforcement. Cochise County Superintendent of Schools Dr. Jacqui Clay said the program is needed because safety planning has become a necessity for educators because “things have changed in this world to the point where people are getting killed in schools.”

$2 billion: The current budget for the City of Tucson.