Designing the menu
Setting the Agenda's agenda for 2025 ... Lots of ballots left to count in Pima County.
Tucson Agenda readers have a lot on their minds right now.
We sent out a survey yesterday and the responses kept coming in all day.
They haven’t stopped. At last count, 214 Agenda subscribers had filled out the five-question survey. Thank you! We now have a much clearer picture of what our readers are thinking at the dawn of the second Trump administration, and what they want us to do as reporters over the next year.
Once the responses slow to a trickle and we have time to process them all, we’ll show you what we heard and we’ll talk about what that means for the Agenda.
For now, we put together a sampling of what readers said and laid out some of what will be on the Agenda’s menu for next year’s coverage, regardless of who is president.
What readers said
In the eyes of many of our readers, a second Trump administration is a scary prospect.
This response sums up a lot of what we heard:
“I’m heartbroken and soul crushed and embarrassed and scared.”
But sprinkled across other responses were “hopeful,” “building community,” and “determined.”
The impression we’re getting from Agenda readers is that they want news about local government, what local people are doing to deal with Trump policies, and how regular people can participate in the political process.
“More than ever, community groups are going to need to collaborate. We're likely to have less money from the feds and more people in need. Focusing on successful collaborations would be helpful.”
They don’t want endlessly depressing news, or partisanship from their reporters.
They want reporters to keep an eye on what the Trump administration does with regard to mining and environmental damage in Southern Arizona, the effects of climate change, attacks on reproductive rights and the LGBTQ community, and draconian policies at the Arizona-Mexico border.
“If there are detention centers and mass deportations we will be ground zero and that will need lots of publicity.”
They’re also concerned about healthcare, Social Security, disbanding the Department of Education, and some of the federal grants used by local governments that we touched on yesterday.
More than a few of our readers, who mostly said they were Democrats, also want to understand the people who voted for Trump.
As you might imagine, a lot of that came in the form of responses like: “Evil won over good. WTF are people thinking?”
But they also showed what seemed like genuine curiosity. For example, one reader wanted to know how people could support both Trump and the ballot measure that protects abortion rights in Arizona.
“The ambivalence and rationalization of people who voted for both Prop. 139 and Trump (who caused the need for 139 and similar proposals in other states) would be something to try to comprehend.”
We still want to hear from more of our readers. The more feedback we get from readers, the better we understand what you all want from local news.
The survey is only open to paid subscribers, so upgrade today if you want to be a part of it.
What’s on the menu
All of this is invaluable feedback for us that we’ll consider as we plan our coverage for next year.
In the meantime, here is a bit of what is sure to be on the Agenda’s menu in 2025.
Homelessness ordinances. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court opened the door for cities and towns to make their own rules, officials are trying to balance humanitarian values with the desire to keep streets and parks clean and safe.
The City of Tucson’s sales tax election in March and how that money would be spent. Right now, it’s heavy on public safety and many Tucson residents have voiced their concerns about spending more money on police.
The RTA Next election in November. This is going to be a long, complicated process. Officials will try to persuade voters to approve a sales tax to fund a $2.4 billion transportation plan, while residents try to persuade officials to include their preferred projects. All while balancing large-scale goals like building better highways and making urban streets friendlier to pedestrians and bicyclists for the next 20 years.
The overhaul of Tucson’s zoning code. It’s hard to overstate how much is at stake here. Fixing the housing crisis, simplifying the process for developers, changing the look of the city, the list goes on and on.
Billions of taxpayer dollars in the City of Tucson and Pima County budgets that will be set in the spring. We’d like to take a solid swing at doing this right. Whether you’re concerned solely about how your tax dollars are spent, or you see budgets as moral documents and want them to reflect your values, we’d like to make these budgets easy for you to understand, as well as the decision-making process that leads up to their approval.
Tucson City Council elections in November. City voters will choose who represents them in Wards 3, 5, and 6 for the next four years. The council members will be the ones who decide many of the issues we just described.
And those decisions will be made at about two-dozen meetings of the Tucson City Council next year, and another two-dozen meetings of the Pima County Board of Supervisors. We’ll track all these issues, and many others, as officials debate them throughout the year.
If that’s what you’re hoping to get from a local news outlet, then smash that button and upgrade to a paid subscription!
Here’s the latest on local election results:
Superior Court judges: Pima County voters are saying they want to keep all 16 Superior Court judges who were on the ballot this year. As of Friday morning, roughly 200,000 people voted to retain them and about 70,000 voted to kick them out.
Congressional District 6: Democrat Kirsten Engel pulled ahead of Republican incumbent Rep. Juan Ciscomani in this tight race. She was up by 209 votes as of Friday morning.
Pima County Supervisors: Incumbent Republican Supervisor Steve Christy now leads Democratic challenger Vanessa Bechtol in District 4. Christy was up by more than 1,300 votes.
Legislative District 17: Democrat John McLean was leading Republican Vince Leach in the race for the district’s Senate seat. McLean was up by more than 1,300 votes.
137,000: The estimated number of ballots left to count in Pima County.
In the article titled, "What’s on the menu," of all the bullet points listed for the City Council to cover, not once is the term climate or any equivalent mentioned. This is the item that is overarching and it is not even mentioned. There is an energy study that has been commissioned to GDS Consulting. That there is no mention of climate is alarming.