We imagine local voters are still sorting through all the candidates and propositions on the November 3 ballot.
But, just for a moment, let’s peek over the horizon.
This time next year, it’s highly likely the Pima County Board of Supervisors will be making its case for voters to approve a massive bond package.
That means the 25 members of the county’s Bond Advisory Committee are going to be at the center of the local political universe as officials from cities and towns come out of the woodwork with worthwhile ideas that need funding.
The committee’s job is to vet those ideas and come up with a workable recommendation for the Board of Supervisors, which would then decide whether to put the bond package on the November 2027 ballot. (When this is all over, somebody should buy the members of the bond committee a nice dinner.)
If you look at just Tucson, the city council is thinking about a $383 million package. Meanwhile, Oro Valley officials want $21.6 million for a new police headquarters and $10 million for a park upgrade. Marana officials are asking for $8 million for a drainage project. Sahuarita officials will make their pitch at the bond committee’s next meeting.
The advisory committee is going to hold hearings from now until the list is finalized in March. It’s a five-month sprint to vet projects, like adding public bathrooms to parks, widening roads, building shelters for unhoused people, and so forth.
It’s kind of like winning the lottery and all your friends and family come knocking, asking to pay for their kid’s college tuition, cover medical bills or pay off their mortgage. You want to say “yes, of course!” to all of them, but the money only goes so far and you have to say “no, sorry” to some of them.
But before officials can win that “lottery,” they have to persuade voters to pay for it all with property taxes.
The county doesn’t have a great track record with bonds. Voters rejected bonds in 2015 and 2018, as County Administrator Jan Lesher laid out in a nice explanation of the bond process.
And voters might still have a pair of $250 million bonds from this November’s ballot — one for Pima Community College and one for the Joint Technical Education District — fresh in their minds when they fill out ballots next year.
To get a sense of the political maneuvering and competing interests, let’s dip into this week’s Tucson City Council meeting.
Picking and choosing
City staff came up with a list of 17 projects that would be a good fit for the bond package, but council members also had ideas of their own.
And none of them know how big the county bond package is going to be yet.
The list from staff includes a 911 communications center, a new fire station, expanding the Santa Rita Skate Park, adding more affordable housing, renovating city court and widening Old Vail Road. (If you want the 75-page version of the list, click here.)
Mayor Regina Romero noted Pima County officials are “moving very, very quickly” and urged the council members to look for ways to collaborate with the county, while keeping in mind that it’s been nearly 20 years since the county passed a full bond package.
The list is “going to have to be cut down, especially because right now we don’t know what the Pima County Board of Supervisors is willing to go out to the voters and ask for,” Romero said.
Councilman Paul Cunningham had a slightly different take. He urged his colleagues to be ambitious with their requests, saying “you’ve got to figure out what’s the max you can ask with a straight face and not have people go nuts.”
Cunningham did take issue with the notion that city projects would only account for 40% of the total bond amount. He’d like to see that bumped up to 47%.
He also said the council should focus on projects that benefit both city and county residents, like adding water slides at Udall Park. Councilman Kevin Dahl added that the Amphi pool is near the city-county boundary and could use an upgrade.
Councilwoman Selina Barajas said the Tucson Rodeo Grounds should be a high priority. She’d like the city to pick up the facility’s last master plan, which dates all the way back to 1995, and “dust that off.” She pointed to the need for nighttime lights, air conditioning and public art.
Barajas also said she was “super excited” to see the Santa Rita Skate Park make the list.
Councilwoman Miranda Schubert wants the city to focus on housing, household affordability, climate preparedness and water security (she was particularly concerned the list from city staff didn’t have much to offer on that last one).
The timeline
The Bond Advisory Committee’s next meeting is October 30. It’ll keep meeting periodically until it makes a recommendation to the Board of Supervisors in March.
The board will consider that recommendation for a few months and then decide in May or June whether to put the bond package on the November ballot.
There will be all sorts of public discussion about what should or shouldn’t be in the bond package, but that likely will be limited to people with a keen interest in specific projects.
The public at large gets involved in a real way when the publicity pamphlet for the bond package goes out next August and explains in (hopefully) plain language what exactly voters will consider at the ballot box that November.
À la Grijalva: National Democrats are worried that if they take the House this year, Republicans could simply refuse to seat them, the New York Times writes, drawing on the episode where Democratic U.S. Rep. Adelita Grijalva sat around for two months after winning her election as Republican leaders refused to actually swear her in. The Times outlines the machinations that could come into play in such a scenario, including states refusing to certify the results of their elections, or the House clerk (who is chosen by the speaker) simply refusing to sign off on the paperwork to seat new members.
“The possibility sounds far-fetched and is regarded by many legal scholars as a vanishingly remote one. … But the same might have been said in 2020 of the possibility that Republican lawmakers, under pressure from Mr. Trump, would challenge the Electoral College results that confirmed Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory,” the Times writes.
Porch pirates, election edition: The viral video of a canvasser supporting Gov. Katie Hobbs stealing a package off a porch while dropping off campaign literature was shot right here in Southern Arizona, Fox10’s Taylor Wirtz notes. The Marana-area homeowner who had her package lifted released a statement saying that she didn’t expect the video of a Living United for Change in Arizona (LUCHA) temp worker stealing her goods to go viral — she just wanted to warn her neighbors about the theft. LUCHA says it has since fired the pirate.
Documentary, at our attention span: Our friends at the Border Chronicle made a pretty cool 10-minute documentary about the protests in Lochiel to save the very old cottonwood trees that were chopped down to make way for more border wall. It’s worth a watch if you’re into that sort of thing. And while you’re at it, subscribe to their newsletter, and pick up a ticket to their five-year anniversary party in Tucson tonight!
On second thought: We previously told you that Benson decided not to accept the gift of a new modular-building city hall complex from Aluminum Dynamics Inc., the smelter business that local voters ran out of town (while also recalling a few politicians in the process). But last week, the city council changed its mind after Councilman Ross Kaplowitch switched his vote, the Herald/Review’s Matt Hickman writes. While the building itself is free, breaking it down, moving it and rebuilding will cost somewhere around $1 million to $1.6 million, the dissenting members of the council noted.
Fill out your ballot!: Here’s a handy guide to the state and local propositions on your ballot, courtesy of the Tucson Sentinel’s Jim Nintzel and the Arizona Mirror’s Jim Small. Between that and our guide to the local judges, there’s really no excuse to sit on that ballot any longer.
Inside the Issues is a nonpartisan series from the Arizona Citizens Clean Elections Commission about the issues shaping Arizona’s future — the ones that are complex, consequential, and easy to overlook.
Each episode brings voters into the conversation with experts, public officials, and community leaders who explain what’s actually at stake and what decisions are ahead. No pundits, no party line — just the context you need to walk into the voting booth informed instead of guessing.
Former Tucson Democratic lawmaker Tom Prezelski was wearing his Tucson best when he attended a forum on child care policy hosted by Democratic U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego recently.
But up in Phoenix, the preferred getup of the Prezelski clan is apparently pretty suspicious attire — and Gallego’s staff pegged him as a Republican tracker, he noted on his Facebook page.
“Someone whispered in Senator Gallego’s ear and he looked up, briefly interrupting his panel discussion and said ‘Is that Prezelski? My staff thought you were some kind of tracker. I said, no he’s not. I’ve known him for twenty years.’”
(If you don’t know what a tracker is, we suggest this primer our sister newsletter, the Arizona Agenda, wrote a few years back.)
He added that Gallego’s staff apologized, and that “someone in security tagged me as suspicious owing to my jacket, boots and bola tie.”
Clarification: Yesterday’s edition referred to Democratic Reps. Alma and Consuelo Hernandez’s new PAC as a “side hustle.” But it’s an unpaid side hustle, as the sisters are not taking a cut of the fundraising.