Can the Pima County Board of Supervisors require all law enforcement operating in Pima County — including federal agents — to ditch the masks?
Supervisor Jennifer Allen has put an item on next Tuesday’s meeting agenda to discuss a new ordinance that would require law enforcement to show their faces and wear visible identification.
She said the idea came out of concerns related to masked law enforcement in Minnesota and recent actions here in Tucson.
“We have all seen the brutality and lawlessness of federal immigration agents in Minnesota, followed by lies from the federal government,” Allen said. “We need agents to be accountable for their actions, which means they shouldn’t wear masks and we should all know their agency and badge number.”
Allen also put on an agenda item for an ordinance seeking to ban federal immigration enforcement officials from carrying out immigration raids on Pima County-owned properties. Oh, and have the county post signs saying exactly that.
We don’t condone theft, but we could see a few of those proposed signs getting stolen to be put up on dorm room walls some day.
We don't know what the proposed signs would say, but maybe they'll look like this sign we saw at a protest in December.
Opposing the Marana Detention Center
Allen is asking her peers on the board to sign off on a resolution condemning the plan to turn an old prison in Marana into an ICE detention center.
The $15 million purchase of the former state-owned site in Marana by the Management and Training Corporation (MTC) last year has drawn the ire of local residents.
Marana Mayor Jon Post told the public nearly two weeks ago that the town has no role in the planned detention center, since the zoning is in place.
The proposed two-page resolution from the supervisors lists a litany of concerns, including plummeting property values for home owners next to detention centers, abuses in those centers and MTC’s spotty track record running facilities in other states.
Technically, Pima County doesn’t have any authority over the project, either. It is considered a federally run facility.
Don’t cash that check
What won’t be discussed at Tuesday’s board meeting is how the county will spend the roughly $20.8 million it got from selling land to the developers behind Project Blue. While the initial plans were going to have a public discussion next week, that chat has been pushed back to March.
This might be what Project Blue looks like if they break ground, but that might get held up until the lawsuit is settled.
This has nothing to do with a potential legal fight over the sale, filed by opponents of the data centers who argue the county violated the state’s open meeting law by failing to adequately notify the public. We don’t know how a judge would remedy the issue if they ruled the county violated the law.
Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher said in a memo that she wanted more time to identify budget priorities for the county as it builds the next fiscal year budget.
A future bond?
While we’re chatting about the county, the supervisors will also discuss the possibility of putting a $100 million bond on a future ballot at their retreat on Feb. 9.
For now, Lesher believes a bond election next year would be a better idea than trying to push it onto the November ballot.
“The 2026 ballot is expected to be crowded, with concerns that bond messaging could be lost. A 2027 election would allow for additional time for meaningful public engagement, stakeholder input, and project scoping,” Lesher wrote in a memo a week ago.
The supervisors could choose not to back any bond, although Lesher notes the county hasn’t had a successful bond since 2014, when voters backed the expansion the Pima Animal Care Center. Bond proposals in 2015 and 2018 were rejected by voters.
It isn’t clear exactly what would be part of the $100 million bond package — that’s likely to be discussed at the retreat — but our best guess is a number of infrastructure improvements. We know that there is a long list of deferred maintenance on two of the county buildings downtown, including the former Bank of America building as well as the adjacent Legal Services Building.
A $100 million county bond package would cost the owner of a home (assessed at $200,000) roughly an additional $13 a year.
It’s unclear whether there is political support for the bond on the board, but we’ll know more on Feb. 9.
Did we mention Joe live-blogs the meetings? You can find him here on Bluesky here.
Big protest day: So many Tucson Unified School District staff members had called to say they’d be absent today as part of the “ICE Out! National Day of Action” that district officials felt compelled to close 21 schools for the day, they told us. Meanwhile, this Reddit thread has a list of local businesses that are closed today to participate in the general strike.
Money rolls in: The Cochise County supervisors approved an agreement with the Arizona Department of Public Safety that brings $1.57 million for border security operations, per the Herald/Review. The supervisors highlighted a recent child abduction, while residents said the county shouldn’t support ICE and the Border Patrol after agents shot and killed two people in Minneapolis. John Gjerde of the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office said the money is needed because even though people assume border crossings stopped since President Donald Trump took office last January, “that is not true. They’re still occurring, and there’s still drug smuggling and human smuggling happening.”
Cash is king: A bill to require businesses accept cash might find a welcome audience among retailers on Fourth Avenue, KOLD’s Paris Fransway reports. Republican Rep. Joseph Chaplik’s HB2555, which the House Commerce Committee approved by a 9-1 vote, would make it so any purchase of $100 or less could be made with cash. The Fourth Avenue merchants say they’d rather get cash so they don’t have to charge a processing fee for credit or debit card purchases.
Not worth it: Tucsonans should resist the urge to intervene when they see shoplifting, particularly after another person was shot and killed last week at a 7-Eleven store, Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller writes. As Pima County Laura Conover pointed out, these shoplifting incidents are “recorded and surveilled on really high-quality camera equipment,” which allows police to build serious cases against shoplifters over time, rather than misdemeanor charges from a single incident.
Down, but not out: Jude Cook, owner of Ignite Sign Art Museum, is still working to get his museum back on track after a fire ignited and destroyed hundreds of items and severely damaged the building, Laura Holanszky reports for Arizona Public Media. Cook says local people have donated money and signs, sometimes pulling items “hidden away in people’s backyard storage.” And the damage actually gave him an opportunity to redesign the museum, which he hopes to reopen this year.
We took a look at available seats for tomorrow’s opening day sales for Melania (the movie) here in Tucson.
While some theaters were showing some decent pre-sales on Thursday, we kinda wonder who the hell bought the two front rows of the theater at El Con mall for tomorrow night. (X’s are sold out, blue boxes are available seating.)
So it’s not too late to get good seats for the documentary that Jeff Bezos spent $40 million to have exclusive rights to distribute.
