The first Tuesday of the month grind
Putting out fires … Docking Kelly’s pension … And Mexico paid for this wall.
Welcome to the first Tuesday of January, which is the first meeting for the Pima County Board of Supervisors, the Tucson City Council and several other elected bodies.1
Here is a quick preview of five items we’re keeping an eye on today.
1. New boss
This morning, the supervisors will pick among themselves a new chair and vice chair. The chair of the county board is the group’s leader and, more often than not, the public face of county government.
But the role also comes with less glamorous duties — including sitting at the dais and steering meetings that can drag on for eight hours at a time.
A few years ago, there was an informal agreement to rotate the chair every year, but both former Supervisors Sharon Bronson and Adelita Grijalva served two one-year terms back-to-back.
Our money is on the current Vice Chair, Supervisor Jennifer Allen, to be the next chair.
Jennifer Allen2. New Meeting structure
The supervisors will also talk about changing their meeting structure, considering a system similar to the City of Tucson’s — with separate study sessions to study and debate the issues, and regular meetings, where formal votes are taken, held at different times.
The goal of the new system is to cut down on the length of meetings and make them more accessible to the public, including possibly shifting from the typical 9 a.m. start time to evening meetings. Another option is moving meetings back a week so they no longer conflict with the Tucson City Council schedule.
However, a recent memo suggests night meetings would cost county taxpayers several hundred dollars per meeting, as they would require security officers and parking staff to work late.
3. New contracts
The board will also consider a multi-year contract with Arizona-based Axon Enterprise Inc. to provide Tasers, body cameras and data services through 2036. The agreement would cost taxpayers an additional $45 million over the next decade, but would also lock in pricing.
An important footnote to the contract: The data collected by the cameras would remain with Pima County and only be shared with federal officials if they have a court order.
Axon body cameras are still pretty bulky. Image courtesy of Axon Enterprise.4. New agreement
Both the city and county will discuss a multi-agency agreement to provide firefighting services to the City of South Tucson, which has long struggled to maintain enough resources to handle structure fires.
Under the proposed agreement, the county would give South Tucson $1.2 million over four years, and the City of Tucson would agree to respond to structure fires within the one-square-mile city. Tucson has long responded to large-scale fires in South Tucson, but the new deal would help defray ongoing costs.
5. New clerk
The council will discuss its next steps in hiring a new city clerk this afternoon.
The clerk is one of a small handful of positions where the council is directly involved in the hiring decision. While the term “city clerk” may not sound powerful, the office oversees city elections and plays a significant role in transparency at the City of Tucson.
There’s more on the agenda, including items on the housing crisis, the local economy and analysis of recent federal actions. But these topics are now regular items on both city and county agendas.
A quick scan of the agenda will usually find them buried under less-than-exciting titles, like “Discussion and Direction Relating to Matters that are Pending in Front of the Pima County Board of Supervisors and Other Regional Jurisdictions.”
As always, Joe will be following along closely — even the boring-sounding items.
And you can follow him on Bluesky for his observations from the city and county meetings today.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wants to dock U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly’s military pension, announcing on Twitter yesterday that the Pentagon will begin “retirement grade determination proceedings” over a video that Arizona’s senior senator made with five other members of Congress back in November.
“Senator Mark Kelly — and five other members of Congress — released a reckless and seditious video that was clearly intended to undermine good order and military discipline,” Hegseth said Monday morning on Twitter.
At the center of the dispute is the use of the phrase “unlawful orders,” which Hegseth has characterized as seditious — even though the Uniform Code of Military Justice makes clear that service members are required to obey only lawful orders.
Hegseth also hinted he may pursue additional action against Kelly if the retired Navy captain continued to — in his view — make subversive statements.
“Captain Kelly’s status as a sitting United States Senator does not exempt him from accountability, and further violations could result in further action,” he wrote.
Kelly responded quickly, saying neither Hegseth nor President Donald Trump gets to decide what Americans can say about their government.
“Pete Hegseth wants to send the message to every single retired servicemember that if they say something he or Donald Trump doesn’t like, they will come after them the same way,” Kelly wrote on Twitter.
Congresswoman Adelita Grijalva, a close friend of Kelly’s, weighed in on Hegseth’s announcement, calling it disgraceful.
“Let’s be clear: @SenMarkKelly is a national hero,” she wrote on Twitter. “He served our country bravely overseas and in space. Now, @SecWar is punishing him for defending our troops’ right to refuse illegal orders. That’s not just wrong — it’s un-American.”
A final decision on Kelly’s pension is expected in about 45 days.
Down to the wire: The razor-sharp concertina wire that runs along the border fence in cities like Nogales is now being installed all over the Arizona-Mexico border, even on the ground in desert areas where migrants can easily get over it, the Arizona Daily Star’s Emily Bregel reports. But wildlife has a harder time dealing with the wire, and that’s got environmental advocates worried about injuries to animals, including endangered species in Southern Arizona.
Dramatizing the desert: The Pima County Sheriff’s Department will be featured in a 10-episode series on A&E called “Desert Law.” Show producers did ridealongs with sheriff’s deputies last year to film the series, per the Green Valley News. The series premiere is tomorrow at 8 p.m. and you can watch a sneak peek at the A&E website.
Showing grandpa the door: Tucson’s Deja Foxx may have lost her bid for a seat in Congress last year, but her youthful embrace of social media as a campaign strategy lives on, per Politico. She was one of dozens of 20-something candidates with little to no political experience who ran for office in recent years, often against elderly candidates.
“We are consuming so much on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where videos from our Congress person are mixed in with life updates from our best friend from middle school,” Foxx said. “It demands a different level of vulnerability that frankly a lot of our older electives aren’t comfortable with.”
New take on the food pantry: A nonprofit in midtown Tucson is offering a community fridge and freezer, KGUN’s Alex Dowd reports. Anybody can go to what organizers call the “Tucson Freedge” and take or leave whatever food they need.
“And not just what they need, stuff that they want too,” said Tucson Freedge’s Board Director Saeed Torres. “Like they don’t need ice cream, but it makes life happier, and it’s something everyone deserves to have if they like it.”
Independent local journalism isn’t as great as ice cream (what is, really?), but it’s something everyone deserves to have, too. Your support makes that possible!
The rent is too damn high: When University of Arizona students interviewed 117 low-income residents in Pima County last year, they found three-quarters of them were spending more than half their income on rent, the Arizona Daily Star’s Prerana Sannappanavar reports. They also found that the federal government shutdown and the subsequent disruption of SNAP benefits hurt more than half of the people they interviewed.
Mayes wants a do-over: Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes wants the Arizona Corporation Commission to hold another hearing on the deal between Tucson Electric Power and the developers of Project Blue. Mayes said in a press release yesterday that the agreement was made “outside of the public process” with a loophole that benefits the developer, and it sets a dangerous precedent for similar agreements in the future.
An eight-foot security fence recently went up around the Mexican Consulate in Tucson — which does, technically, mean our neighbors to the south are willing to pay for a wall.
For context: Several nearby businesses in midtown Tucson have recently been fencing in their properties in an effort to deter trespassing and vandalism.
Just one city block away, the property owner of a closed Jack in the Box has a new fencing lining the entire property, suggesting the wall isn’t about geopolitics so much as the realities of property crimes in Tucson.
We missed the Marana Town Council meeting in yesterday’s new political calendar, but they meet tonight at 6 p.m.
Having public meeting where the only people who can attend are unemployed (doubtful) or retired is unfair to county residents. I would think dollars spent on evening meeting is more democratic and why is night time more costly? Why a parking attendant and on duty cops could watch the place in the evening.