One of the last official items on the Tucson City Council agenda last week was to rename two city parks, one for a central figure in Tucson’s Chicano civil-rights movement.
For over a year, friends (and wife) of Salomón “Sal” Baldenegro worked through the city’s process to rename Joaquin Murrieta Park to honor his decades of service to the community.
Instead, the council voted to delay the vote indefinitely after several council members stated they were concerned about the poorly defined rules currently in place to rename city properties.
The council reordered the agenda to move up a request to rename the Kennedy Park Softball Complex after former softball player and Salpointe High School Coach Stacy Redondo before effectively putting the broader renaming process on hold.
The issue? Fifty-year-old newspaper articles detailing allegations that Baldenegro beat his wife were sent to council offices and brought up during call to the public.
Baldenegro was never prosecuted and his supporters argue the newspaper coverage was biased, but city officials are wary of another Cesar Chavez moment.
City officials moved quickly to remove the name of the civil rights icon shortly after he was accused of sexually abusing girls and women during his time as a leader in the labor movement.
Those accusations were quickly followed by a public admission by Dolores Huerta, who said she was assaulted by Chavez and had two of his children.
Tucson Vice Mayor Lane Santa Cruz explains her thinking about renaming city properties.
Vice Mayor Lane Santa Cruz acknowledged that support for changing the name of the westside park in her ward predated the Chavez scandal.
But the council needs to reconsider the renaming process, Santa Cruz argued, saying the wrong decision could do more harm than the intended good.
“That has put us in a reckoning for how we name and honor people. Many of us are sitting with that harm that this brings up — the harm of having lived with silence, harmful and violent experiences,” Santa Cruz said. “I believe in trauma-informed approach to local government and one that accounts for intersectional historical context that takes seriously the physiological effects of trauma and can communicate that transparently.”
One of the no votes against the measure for a moratorium on renaming parks came from Councilman Kevin Dahl, who said he would have supported Santa Cruz’s motion but only after a vote on the proposed name change — which he supported.
Divided community
While many during call to the public came in support of Baldenegro, comments submitted to the city electronically were almost evenly split between opposing and supporting the proposal.
His wife, Cecilia Cruz Baldenegro, said her husband’s political enemies were attempting to derail the process by bringing up the assault charges.
“One of the particular issues that has been raised today and at other times in hopes of getting you to vote against the park renaming proposal before you is the issue of charges of domestic violence were dismissed over 50 years ago,” she said. “His wife knew, and so did the judge, that the charges were trumped up, as happened to many activists and protesters.”
We’ll note that she is Baldenegro’s second wife and the now-dismissed charges were associated with his first wife, Elaine Baldenegro.
Westside resident Patricia Palomera opposed the name change, noting she grew up watching her mother be physically abused without ever reporting it to the police.
A social worker for 14 years, she challenged the council to hold those who may be honored with a name change to a higher standard.
“I feel we need to raise the bar for our community's leaders. We all felt the pain when our hero, Cesar Chavez, was accused of assault and rape on several women and minors,” Palomera said.
While the community discussion largely focused on the allegations of domestic violence, his supporters said the council never got to discuss Baldenegro’s contributions to the west side.
This includes being part of a small group of west side barrio residents who lobbied for the creation of the park now known as Joaquin Murrieta Park.
And while his group did clash with police at times —including staging a picnic at the El Rio Golf Course to draw awareness for the need for a park — Baldenegro’s supporters said those protests were provocative, but peaceful. He was, however, arrested during the protest.
Another supporter told us that Baldenegro worked behind the scenes with Tucson Police Department in the ‘70s to change the interactions between Latino youth and law enforcement, leading to a pilot community policing program specifically for the westside barrios.
It is unclear how long the moratorium on name changes will last, but staff have been directed to start working on a clear process to evaluate future requests.
Baldenegro’s supporters said while they feel they were politically outmaneuvered last week, they will continue to fight to honor Baldenegro by continuing to lobby for a change to the park’s name.
Spilling out of the council chambers: The executive director of Save the Scenic Santa Ritas is upset that Sahuarita police claimed SSSR was involved in an incident outside Sahuarita Councilman Ed Lytle’s house. The Green Valley News reported Tuesday that Sahuarita police were keeping an eye on Lytle’s home after three environmental activists approached him in his driveway. The activists reportedly told Lytle they wanted him to pay attention to their complaints about mining in the Santa Ritas. They weren’t aggressive and promptly left when Lytle asked them to. Sahuarita police said the activists were from SSSR, but SSSR Executive Director John Dougherty told the newspaper he doubted any of his colleagues would do such a thing and suggested the mining company Hudbay may have posed as SSSR volunteers to stir up trouble. A day after the story ran, Dougherty sent a demand letter to Sahuarita police for “records related to accusations published Tuesday in the Green Valley News,” saying it was “extremely irresponsible and unprofessional” for police to claim SSSR was involved.
Staying the course: Tucson Electric Power tells us they have no plans to change their long-term goals to use more green sources of energy after the EPA repealed greenhouse gas emission limits on fossil fuel power plants earlier this week. TEP plans to convert its coal-powered units at the Springerville Generating Station to run on natural gas by 2030. As we’ve noted before, the state does regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
New face in the race: Months after Tucson City Councilman Paul Cunningham signaled he would not run for reelection — without ruling out a run for mayor — Ward 2 has its first candidate: Ethan Rigel. He bills himself as a community organizer who will “make Tucson more affordable, tackle our housing crisis, and invest in infrastructure that works for us now and prepares us for the future,” with an eye on TEP’s rate increases and the way Beale Infrastructure pushed Project Blue “despite enormous community opposition.”
When that election rolls around next year, we’ll be right here helping you keep track of it all.
New deal, new problems: Tucson hasn’t had to rely on its underground aquifers since it started using Colorado River water pumped through the Central Arizona Project two decades ago, but the situation may change under the new river deal. And that has City Manager Tim Thomure worried about PFAS chemicals in city wells, including 24 that were taken out of service due to PFAS and eight that are for emergency use only, Tony Davis reports for the Arizona Daily Star. Thomure (who used to run Tucson Water) proposed a cleanup plan, which he estimates could take 18 to 24 months.
Traveling piggy bank: The receipts are in and show that tourists spent $2.89 billion in Pima County last year, as well as $933 million on travel, per a memo from County Administrator Jan Lesher. Other little tidbits from the Arizona Office of Tourism’s report: 16% of tourists traveled with pets, the average length of stay was just under four nights and 12% attended an athletic event.
We have one last note on our story today about renaming Joaquin Murrieta Park.
We didn’t have room to quote the woman at call to the public who argued that the community needs to stop idolizing men at the expense of the movements and the communities that they're a part of.
“It's 2026, and I have yet to meet or learn about a man who is deserving of a park, a building, or an alley named after them,” she said.