A first look at the November ballot

The November ballot is starting to take shape — long before most voters are paying attention.

We’ve still got about six months before the general election, but with key deadlines approaching, we’ve started tracking what’s likely to land in front of Tucson-area voters.

It is too early to know exactly which candidates will be on the ballot — there are a handful of primary battles ahead of us here in Southern Arizona. And some groups are working down to the wire to get enough signatures for their statewide initiatives to land on the ballot.

What we do have is a pretty good idea of what bonds and sales tax increases have been referred by local governments — and which ones fizzled out before reaching a formal vote.

The deadline for cities, towns, school districts and counties to submit issues to the ballot is fast approaching. By next Thursday, May 7, local jurisdictions must notify their local board of supervisors if they want to add a question to the ballot.

We’ll get into the details in the coming months — how much each measure might cost the average taxpayer and what the money will be used for. Today we’re gonna give you the big-picture overview of the various items likely to appear on the bottom of your ballot this fall.

While voters approved a budget override for Tucson Unified School District and bonds for both the Sunnyside and Flowing Wells school districts last year, two of the region’s largest technical schools are now either asking or at considering asking voters to help pay to expand their classrooms.

For the first time in 30 years, the governing board for Pima Community College wants voters to approve a new bond, to the tune of $250 million. The college relies on property taxes and tuition for nearly all of its funding, more than a decade after then-Gov. Doug Ducey eliminated all state aid for community colleges in Pima and Maricopa counties in 2015.¹

PCC wants the cash influx to help address an estimated $56 million in deferred maintenance, as well as build new Centers of Excellence at various campuses and a new police headquarters at the downtown campus.

Meanwhile, the governing board for the Pima Joint Technical Education District (JTED) is discussing next week whether to refer a bond to the November ballot.

The board is still debating whether to ask voters for a $300 million bond or a $150 million bond to expand its campuses. The JTED currently has a sizable waitlist of high school students from 14 local school districts eager to enroll in trade-focused courses like welding, construction and automotive technology.

The JTED is largely funded by the state and property taxes, but it doesn’t have a dedicated revenue stream to build new, high-tech buildings.

For what it is worth, one of the loudest complaints from employers is that Tucson doesn’t have a deep bench of trained workers ready to take jobs in technical fields.

The Tucson City Council referred Tucson Electric Power’s franchise agreement to this fall’s ballot. If you’re getting a case of deja vu, it’s because a similar issue came up in 2023, when voters rejected Proposition 412.

That ballot measure would have extended the franchise agreement with TEP for another 25 years. That proposal also added a new fee — roughly $1 a month for a typical bill — to put utility lines underground.

This time around, city officials and TEP are keeping things simpler — and cheaper.

The new agreement does not change the franchise fee (about 2.25%), which is already built into current electric bills.

It also does not include a new monthly surcharge like the one that sank Prop. 412.

So — will this raise your electric bill? Not directly.

Any potential rate increase from TEP — including the current proposed 14% hike — is being decided separately by the Arizona Corporation Commission and is not part of this ballot measure.

Franchise agreements are common, and the city has similar agreements with Southwest Gas and Cox Communications to use city-owned right-of-way property to deliver their services.

Pima County is also asking for an increase in its expenditure limit, essentially allowing it to spend more of the money it gets from property taxes and other revenue sources. Critics are already concerned about the size of the increase, worried it gives the supervisors the ability to increase taxes in the future.

There are limits to how much the supervisors can increase property taxes, but we’ll remind you they set the tax rates for the library and flood control districts in addition to the primary property tax.

The Reid Park Zoological Society has also put a renewal of its one-tenth of a percent sales tax on the ballot, asking voters to simply keep the existing tax that funds the zoo.

We have to put another item in the maybe column for Southern Arizona voters.

More than 2,800 Marana residents signed two related referendums against a proposed data center campus, but the measure is tied up in court. There was a court hearing yesterday that could decide whether the referendums stay on the ballot — but that isn’t the only moving piece tied to developers Beale Infrastructure, which also backed Project Blue.

As we wrote earlier this month, the group behind the referendums asked the town to pull the measures off the ballot after signatures had already been submitted, but the town said it didn’t have the legal authority to do so. Separately, town officials determined the referendums failed to pass a legal review and couldn’t be put on the November ballot. Both actions are being challenged in Pima County Superior Court.

At the same time, Chandler Republican Rep. Jeff Weninger’s House Bill 2873 passed the Senate last week. It still has to go back to the House for a final vote before it can hit Gov. Katie Hobbs’ desk. The bill would allow groups who file referendums the legal authority to remove them before they get to the ballot — a measure supported by Beale Infrastructure’s lobbyist that would allow them (indirectly) to kill the Marana referendum.

Two of the region’s largest political bodies — the Pima County Board of Supervisors and Tucson City Council — aren’t putting anything any bonds on the ballot for themselves this year.

Maybe in 2027, but we’ll worry about that next year.

The county had openly toyed with the idea of putting a $100 million bond on the ballot next year, but didn’t get deep into the weeds during its last budget retreat.

We don’t know everything that is being discussed quietly by county officials, but it is a good guess that deferred maintenance and upgrading key infrastructure were on the list.

While the county administration building is inching closer to being fully renovated (and asbestos-free!), there is a backlog of maintenance issues at the Pima County Superior Court next door, the Pima County Legal Services Building and the old Bank of America building that houses numerous county departments.

And the city — which has flirted with a new bond measure ever since voters overwhelmingly rejected Prop. 414 in 2025 — hasn’t put forward a formal proposal.

With the effort city officials put into urging voters to pass RTA Next — and recent addition of two new members on the Council — it probably made a lot of sense not to push a bond this year. Although we did hear whispers of a Plan B that would have been pushed to the November ballot by some council members if the RTA Next election had failed.

Voters have some big decisions this fall — and a chance to send a message about whether they see these ballot measures as investments in the community or not.

Or, of course, they can reject them all and tell the giraffes at Reid Park Zoo to get a job.