Farmers market faces an uncertain future

Thanks, Congress … Tucson scrambles to house teens … And the Udall Dinner went off script.

It was never a secret, but few people know about the Garden Kitchen’s mini farmers market operating in South Tucson.

For the past 18 months, this now-endangered program has brought fresh produce — grown by refugees and other local farmers — to the parking lot of the Valencia Library once a week. Shoppers can also pick up seasonal bread from Don Guerra, the James Beard Award–winning baker and founder of Barrio Bread.

But the program run by the Garden Kitchen would be hit hard by the proposed federal cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The House-approved bill currently includes nearly $300 billion in cuts to the program.

Without an intervention — or a change of heart from Congress — this unique partnership between the City of South Tucson, the University of Arizona, Pima County, and the Arizona Health Zone could run out of funding by the end of September. The Garden Kitchen serves as a satellite campus for the UA’s Pima County Cooperative Extension.

While the market accepts cash and debit cards, most of its funding comes through SNAP. Customers can also use Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Arizona Farmers Market Coupons for seniors living on fixed incomes, but it isn’t enough to pay the farmers for the produce.

And a little bit of federal funding can go a long way to feed people in Southern Arizona.

Thanks to a partnership with the Arizona Farmers Market Nutrition Program, eligible seniors and families enrolled in the WIC program can use special vouchers to bring home more fresh food. Those receiving SNAP benefits also qualify for additional discounts.

A sign hangs from one of the community gardens.

Meredith Glaubach, who works with the UA, has watched the market steadily grow — not only in the number of shoppers coming each week, but also in the number of farmers they buy from.

“It’s really wonderful to be able to support marginalized farms, new farmers — however we can help make farming more sustainable, especially here in the desert,” Glaubach said.

By the end of their Wednesday morning hours, most of the food was sold — mainly to elderly residents and moms who brought their kids along to help pick out fruits and vegetables.

Guerra says he’s proud to be part of the program, even if it means putting community over profit. With lines often stretching out of his bakery, he’s a well-known name in Tucson — but here, he’s focused on food access.

“I’m really proud to help bring healthy food to people who don’t always have a lot of choices in traditional grocery stores,” Guerra said.

Supporters hope the market could continue with donations, but unless something changes, the clock is ticking.

The Tucson City Council approved its $2.4 billion budget for next year, finalized the language for “Plan Tucson 2025” before it heads to voters in November, and signed off on pay raises for roughly 4,000 city employees.

But the most interesting part of the meeting wasn’t on the agenda.

Mayor Regina Romero announced that her office and city staff had scrambled to find housing for 11 young adults who were left homeless after the sudden closure of the Fred G. Acosta Job Corps Center.

Some were taken in at the HSL Center of Opportunity, while others were placed in temporary housing through city programs.

The Trump administration closed several Job Corps centers across the country this week — including one in Phoenix — citing concerns about the program’s effectiveness. The Job Corps centers teach young unhoused people skills and trades and house them while they’re learning. Last year, the program was operating with a $140 million deficit.

The Council also grappled with a recent Arizona Supreme Court ruling related to “release time” for union employees. In Gilmore v. Gallego, the court found it unconstitutional for cities to pay employees while they perform union duties — a practice explicitly allowed under Tucson’s current labor agreements.

While the full Council weighed potential options, City Attorney Mike Rankin made clear that his office had not yet found a workable solution, noting that other cities have already ended the practice to comply with the ruling.

The Council voted to direct Rankin to continue searching for creative solutions — prompting him to quip that if any Council member knows how to get around the Arizona Constitution, “they know how to get a hold of me.”

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The conversation never stops at City Hall. With a little help from our subscribers, neither will we.

Get real: City of Tucson officials fired back as former Republican state Sen. Justine Wadsack pursues a $8 million lawsuit against the city. She claims the reason she got a speeding ticket (while driving twice the speed limit) was because of her political views, and a conspiracy among Tucson police officers who wanted to “influence an election.” City lawyers called it a “political charade” as they made their case in court Tuesday, the Tucson Sentinel’s Dylan Smith reported.

"Essentially, Wadsack’s claims that the traffic ticket was not due to her driving 71 in a 35, but defendants’ contempt for her actions as a legislator. In fact, this instance was a routine traffic procedure, the consequences of which most people would accept," the city's lawyers wrote.

Legal long shot: Hobbs said she is taking another look at an incident where ICE agents reportedly passed themselves off as Tucson Electric Power workers in order to gather information on a Tucson man who doesn’t have legal immigration status, Capitol Media Services’ Howard Fischer reported. One thing Hobbs’ office is looking at is whether the agents violated state laws against impersonation. Hobbs says that’s a bit of a long shot, but she wants to make clear she is “not OK” with what ICE agents are doing.

“I want ICE to go after the criminals,’’ she said, adding: “I want them to focus on those deportations. That’s what President Trump ran on. And now they’re targeting people who are just trying to comply with the law.’’

Connecting the dots: News stories about cuts to Job Corps, group meals for elderly residents and summer camps usually come out one by one, but they’re all part of the same story: the Trump administration’s attempts to cut federal funding. And that’s part of an even larger vision: a “massive wealth transfer, away from poorer Americans and toward wealthier Americans,” Arizona Daily Star columnist Tim Steller writes. He pointed to the work requirements included in the federal budget bill, which ostensibly are meant to cut out fraud and waste.

“Don’t believe it. These changes to the system would inevitably boot people out who simply don’t fill out or submit forms correctly. That’s not a bug — it’s a feature. It’s the way the bill will succeed at cutting spending,” Steller writes.

Cutting deals: State lawmakers and Gov. Katie Hobbs are negotiating over the state budget, with a deadline looming at the end of the month, Axios’ Jeremy Duda reports. Also looming over the negotiations are the threat of federal spending cuts and a possible economic downturn, but state officials won’t know how bad it will get until later in the year. In the meantime, Senate Republicans are floating the idea of setting aside $90 million they can use to fund pet projects, with the same amount for House Republicans and Hobbs. Also in the mix is Republican Sen. J.D. Mesnard’s plan to get lawmakers to vote this year on the Prop 123 / school voucher plan that he and other Republicans have been pushing.

What are they looking at?: You may have noticed little white dots in the sky over Tucson. Those are high-altitude surveillance balloons the U.S. Army, along with aerospace company Aerostar, are testing, the Arizona Mirror’s Jerod MacDonald-Evoy reports. Neither the Army nor Aerostar would give many details, other than to say the balloons are not connected to U.S. Customs and Border Protection activity on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Well, that was awkward.

The chair of the Pima County Democratic Party sent out an apology following a SNAFU at its biggest fund-raiser of the year, the Udall dinner.

With hundreds of people shelling out money to attend, some of the speakers at the dinner last Saturday made some informal endorsements in upcoming races.

That probably would have been fine if the dinner was held in September after the Congressional District 7 special election and the Tucson City Council primaries had been decided, but we have miles to go in all four of the Democratic primaries.

“At our recent Udall Dinner some speakers expressed support for individual candidates. While these remarks were personal and not made on behalf of the Pima County Democratic Party, I recognize that they left some attendees with the impression that an endorsement had been made,” wrote chair Eric Robbins.

Robbins said in his email that in future all speakers will be “explicitly” reminded that endorsements are a no-no.

Good thing there aren’t any elections next year. Wait. Never mind.