It is an exercise in wonky masochism, but the Pima County Board of Supervisors and the Tucson City Council are vying to see who can spend more time sitting in their (collective) seats of power today.
The supervisors start their bi-weekly meeting at 9 a.m., while the council starts the first of three meetings scheduled for today at 10 a.m.
Both of those meetings will wrap up around noon so that all 11 elected Democrats and the sole Republican, Supervisor Steve Christy, can cross the street to participate in a joint meeting between supervisors and council members inside the Pima Association of Governments (PAG) building at 12:30 p.m.
After that meeting is over, one or both bodies are expected to resume the meetings they started earlier in the morning. Just to make sure they take home the crown of longest meeting day (in March 2026), the council also has a night meeting that will start at 5:30 p.m.
So what’s on their agendas?
For the Pima County Board of Supervisors:
Supervisor Christy is bringing Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cázares-Kelly to discuss the county’s new “Votemobile.” Christy has repeatedly voiced concerns about election security ahead of the upcoming primary and general elections this fall and wants to know more about how the “Votemobile” will be used. The colorful voting booth on wheels was funded with a grant from the Tohono O'odham Nation.
The County’s new “votemobile.”
Supervisor Rex Scott put an item on the agenda simply titled “Supercharging the Pima Early Education Program (PEEPs) Campaign.” Scott told us that the private sector wants to put more money into the popular pre-school program. The new funding from the private sector could help expand the program to more classrooms, Scott said.
With a dedicated revenue source now in place to help builders fund the construction of new affordable housing developments, the supervisors are getting into the weeds on what type of housing Southern Arizona needs and when it could be built over the next decade.
We teased two weeks ago that the supervisors would vote on putting some teeth into their resolutions designed to put in place protections from federal immigration raids on county property, but it didn’t make today’s agenda. We expect it back before the supervisors in a few weeks.
Meanwhile, at the City
The Tucson City Council has an even more action-filled day planned. We already wrote about their budget problems and the ongoing public power discussion on today’s agenda.
They will also discuss:
A $7 million tax break for a new Costco on Tucson’s east side. We wrote a few weeks ago about the proposal, which would give a portion of the sales tax generated back to the developer for five years — topping out at $7.3 million total. Once the new store opens, it could support as many as 320 full and part-time jobs and generate roughly $15 million in sales taxes annually.
It’s not too late, Tucson. Steal this idea from a planned Costco in East Hollywood with affordable housing planned on top of the Costco warehouse. Win-win! (Image courtesy of Thrive Living, which worked with Costco on the design.)
It has been a few weeks since the Tucson City Council announced a handful of ordinances designed to keep federal immigration officers unmasked and off of city property. Tonight, the council will formally vote to make it a law. If passed, the city manager and police chief would have the authority to offer waivers (or not) on a case-by-case basis.
The council will be asked to increase the contract to widen Grant Road underneath the Union Pacific Railroad lines near Interstate 10 by $7.5 million. The increase in funding — which will help finish the project by the end of 2027 — will come solely out of existing RTA dollars.
This is what planners believe Grant Road will look like by Christmas 2027 once it has been widened to three lanes in each direction. (Source: City of Tucson.)
Joint meeting
Just before the supervisors and council agreed to their first joint meeting in years, the two groups were pointing fingers and verbal jabs at each other.
But tomorrow's joint meeting between the council and the supervisors is expected to be far more collaborative, albeit maybe a little humbling.
The two bodies have been working closely on what the city calls the “Safe City Initiative.” The county has a nearly identical version of this plan, but has a different name for the same objectives.
In addition to a recap of what the two government agencies have been doing to address chronic homelessness and fentanyl use, the 11 Democrats and one Republican will learn where they are still falling short.
The Pima County Health Department prepared a “gap analysis“ that shows both agencies have taken concrete steps to address core issues, but they are still in the earliest of stages and some of those solutions rely on short-term funding measures.
Remember when the Pima County Board of Supervisors sold 290 acres of land to the developers of Project Blue for $20.8 million?
Ever wonder what they plan to do with that money? Us too!
More than half will go to capital improvement projects, including $2 million for upgrading the elevators inside the El Presidio Parking Garage in downtown Tucson. Another $2 million will be spent on improvements at the Canoa Ranch Campground near Green Valley.
A whole list of the projects is described here.
Collateral damage: The Iranian soccer team was scheduled to train in Tucson this summer, but the Trump administration’s bombing of Iran may put the Iranian team’s place at the World Cup in doubt, per the Associated Press.
“What is certain is that after this attack, we cannot be expected to look forward to the World Cup with hope,” Iran’s top soccer official Mehdi Taj, a vice president of the Asian Football Confederation, said.
Changing gears: A month after the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department is scaling back its investigation, Reis Thebault reports for the New York Times. Instead of a broad investigation that draws in deputies from across the department, a spokeswoman said only detectives who were directly assigned to the case will keep working it.
“Cutting off your nose to spite your face”: As the March 10 special election for RTA Next approaches, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero is warning of “horrible consequences” if voters reject Propositions 418 and 419, the Arizona Daily Star’s Charles Borla reports. Romero pointed to the city having to lay off bus drivers and members of the Tohono O’odham Nation losing transportation options, among other consequences.
Fading away: Water was a big sticking point when the Project Blue debate was raging in Tucson, but water usage by data centers is barely part of the discussion at the Arizona Legislature this year, per the Arizona Capitol Times’ Reagan Priest. That’s partly due to the fact that bills to regulate data centers’ water usage were introduced by Democratic lawmakers, and GOP committee chairs didn’t let those bills advance. (If you’re curious about data center bills at the Legislature, check out our sister newsletter, the AI Agenda)
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Listening to the past: The ugly history of racial covenants in Tucson blocked many Black families from living in huge sections of the city. Now, residents of the Sugar Hill neighborhood are sharing their stories through an oral history project, Mia Kortright reports for the Tucson Sentinel.
We got a kick out of Gina Swoboda’s candid interview with our sister publication, the Arizona Agenda, yesterday.
The former head of the Arizona GOP, who’s now running for Arizona secretary of state, didn’t hold back when she talked about the wackier members of her party, and she dropped a few f-bombs along the way.
That got us thinking back to Tucson’s own f-bomb-dropping politician, former Mayor Jonathan Rothschild.
Seven years ago, Rothschild was throwing around the expletive at a city council meeting, and didn’t seem to mind that the public could hear, as Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller reported at the time.
Shaking his head and apparently unhappy with the vote, Rothschild said into a hot mic: “Let's move on to Item 10.” Then he grumbled aloud: “You guys are going to turn into Oro f*****g Valley.”
Roger Randolph, the city clerk, quickly reached over to turn off Rothschild's microphone, and the mayor smiled and said “I don't give a f***.”
But months later, Rothschild brought up the incident when Joe asked him if he had any regrets as he wrapped up his time as mayor.
“That one is pretty easy to answer. You know, open mics are the bane of model politicians,” Rothschild said.
He is referring, of course, to the two separate times that an open microphone caught him swearing during recent City Council meetings.
“That was something that was personally embarrassing that I wish that the mic had been off,” he said.
We love that he didn’t regret saying it — just that the hot mic caught him.