Tucson budget woes ahead

When did the crisis start? … A lively downtown debate … And we’ve all been there.

It would be hard to put your finger on when the City of Tucson’s budget for next year veered into crisis mode.

Maybe it was when pandemic funding dried up, President Donald Trump signed executive orders jeopardizing federal funding, the state released anemic economic forecasts or when voters rejected Proposition 414 in March.

All those issues are coming to a head as Tucson City Council members prepare to make their final budget tweaks, which could come as early as their May 20 meeting. So today we’re doing a quick overview of the city’s proposed $2.4 billion budget for next year to get you up to speed.

Our art intern, ChatGPT, didn’t know that the city is years behind on upgrading its computers. This one is too nice.

The upcoming budget discussion is a microcosm of a larger pivot by city governments — heavily dependent on federal dollars and unable to easily raise taxes.

The city can’t just cut its way out of these looming economic crises, but cuts are sure to be part of the solution.

City officials polled residents on what should be prioritized several weeks ago. The top five priorities were:

• Affordable housing

• Homeless support

• Hiring more police officers

• Hiring more firefighters

• Providing more shade and trees

Vice Mayor Lane Santa Cruz was dubious of the survey results, leaning on her academic background to complain about the survey methodology.¹

”To me, it did just read as like we're going to put … what was in Prop 414 as questions back to the public,” she said.

As for federal funding, those cuts have hit the city budget to the tune of roughly $20 million so far, Mayor Regina Romero said.

“Federal actions are right now are being taken such as canceling our Department of Justice grants, the possibility of canceling HUD and CDBG, canceling of EPA funds that were duly awarded to nonprofit organizations like Primavera,” Romero said.

The federal government has awarded $285 million in grants to the city, but the city has not spent those funds — at least not yet. Those funds are now in limbo, City Manager Tim Thomure told Dylan Smith with the Tucson Sentinel last week on the Buckmaster Show.

There were also a number of winners and losers when it came to $112 million requested by various city departments.

Under the city manager’s recommended budget, a total of $71.4 million in requests were not approved.

Click on the image to check out the recommended budget. (Beware, it says it’s 25 pages long. It’s actually 54 pages.)

In a letter to the Council, Thomure said he added approximately $15 million into next year’s budget that had been part of the now-defeated Prop 414. Those millions of dollars will go to:

• Tucson Police operations and equipment

• General capital projects

• Tucson fire department equipment, operations and personnel

• Office of Violence Prevention and Intervention and Thrive Zone investments

• Information Technology

• Public Safety communications personnel

The city will also spend $23.6 million in compensation increases, partly due to the city reaching new labor agreements with several unions representing city employees.

But even this recommendation is being challenged, as funding to the police department goes to salaries to incentivize experienced police officers to stay with the city, while some groups want the city to focus on hiring more new officers.

Cuts to the budget include the $750,000 cut to the county’s PEEPs program, as we wrote about last week, and the elimination of five bus routes designed to cut the transportation department by $1 million.

Tomorrow, we’ll dig a little deeper into the major changes planned in next year’s budget.

If you’re interested in getting a head start in reviewing the $2.4 billion proposed budget, you can read the highlights here.

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Or if you’d rather we keep reading these budget docs for you, just click that button and we’ll take care of it!

News about a corporate-owned comedy club, Punch Line, displacing Borderlands Brewing Company and Playperformance is stirring up deep-seated concerns in downtown Tucson.

And it’s leading to a lively debate on the opinion pages of the Arizona Daily Star.

Retired newsman Michael Chihak took the Rio Nuevo district to task for its “distorted vision” for downtown Tucson. Over the past two decades or so, Rio Nuevo has used sales tax revenue to usher in an era of more bars, more clubs and more restaurants, including $2.1 million for Live Nation’s new comedy club. Not exactly a diverse lineup, Chihak said.

“How exciting! Can’t wait for what’s next downtown. McDonald’s, anyone?” Chihak writes.

Rio Nuevo’s longtime chair Fletcher McCusker responded to Chihak, saying it was good news that “the world’s largest entertainment company selected Tucson over dozens of other options.” McCusker argued big companies find downtown Tucson attractive partly because of all the work the Rio Nuevo board has done supporting more than 100 small, local businesses. And those big companies are needed, he said.

“The dreaded out-of-town developers make up our largest tax-producing projects,” McCusker wrote.

Mellow Dawn Lund, a co-owner of a small business and one of the parents who used to take her kids to Playperformance, took issue with McCusker’s opinion. She said Rio Nuevo favors big companies that own buildings or are developing properties. Live Nation, she said, “doesn’t need a handout.” As for the 100 small businesses McCusker cited, she pointed out that some of them no longer exist. And Rio Nuevo’s “much-publicized” support for small businesses led to grants of just $2,500, which “barely covers a month’s rent,” and doesn’t help much with capital investments or raising wages.

“It’s a kind gesture, but it doesn’t reflect the scale or tone of the announcement,” Lund writes.

Star columnist Tim Steller waded into the debate last weekend, pointing to the “lingering suspicions about the direction of downtown development and the public entity that drives it, Rio Nuevo.”

He noted Borderlands was already in financial trouble when the deal was struck with Live Nation, but a lot of people are still worried about a big company (so big that it owns Ticketmaster) driving out longtime local venues.

Steller spoke to small business owners about their main concerns with how Rio Nuevo operates: A few property owners get most of the money (which McCusker says makes sense because those companies own a lot of properties); some businesses fail soon after getting funds from Rio Nuevo; McCusker has too much control; and new businesses get more support than longtime ones.

“Prioritizing the maximum sales-tax revenue is a simple logic, but it leads to Hard Rock Cafes instead of Borderlands breweries,” Steller writes. “Objecting to that logic doesn’t mean you want a crappy Tucson.”

First they came for…: Trump administration officials want to suspend habeas corpus so they can deport immigrants without court hearings, the New York Times reports. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told reporters that habeas corpus could be suspended during times of “invasion.” Experts say Congress has to authorize such a move. Meanwhile, apprehensions of migrants in Arizona and along the rest of the U.S.-Mexico border are at record lows. The last time habeas corpus was suspended came after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

Funding fights: U.S. Rep. Juan Ciscomani is one of a handful of Republican members of Congress in competitive districts who are feeling the heat about proposed cuts to Medicaid and other federal programs, the Associated Press reported. While Ciscomani says he won’t support steep cuts to Medicaid, a GOP representative in liberal Omaha is trying to hold onto funding for green energy tax breaks. And another Congressman wants to protect the SALT deduction that is popular in New York.

Left in the lurch: Parents of transgender youth in Tucson got some bad news over the past two weeks as El Rio Community Health Center announced it is no longer offering hormone prescriptions for anyone under 19, the Tucson Sentinel’s Natalie Robbins reported. The decision came the day after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services denounced gender-affirming care, despite every major medical association saying it’s safe and effective. El Rio pointed to orders from the Trump administration, including an effort to criminalize providing gender-affirming care, the Arizona Daily Star’s Preranna Sannappanavar reported.

“It’s going to reverse everything that she’s done thus far,” Veronica Camacho, whose 16-year-old transgender daughter was getting hormone treatments at El Rio, told the Star. “There’s not many options left in Tucson or in Arizona for us to do, so at this point, it’s been really stressful.

UA on the board: A University of Arizona student is now on the Arizona Board of Regents, KTAR’s Serena O’Sullivan reports. Gov. Katie Hobbs appointed Felipe Garcia, an undergraduate studying political science and creative intelligence and innovation. He will replace Arizona State University student David Zaragoza. Hobbs says she wants to “ensure that students are represented in university decisions.”

A different time: Arizona Public Media’s Christopher Conover and Zac Ziegler look back on the Cold War strategy of installing 18 nuclear missile silos in Southern Arizona. The only one left is now a museum in Green Valley, but others are buried under some unlikely venues.

Councilman Paul Cunningham tried to get creative when looking at next year’s city budget, hoping to delay a capital project inside Tucson City Hall.

He thought if he could delay the full replacement of the city’s two elevators inside city hall for a year, it could save $570,000.

“We can buy a building for $570,000,” Cunningham noted.

The eastside councilman said his office brought in a local company to fix the elevators in what is loving described as Eastside City Hall for roughly $6,000.

City Manager Tim Thomure told Cunningham that the elevators have been on the books for years in need of a full replacement.

When asked whether the elevators were safe, it prompted an uncomfortable laugh from members of city staff sitting in the audience. Thomure said instead it was a “critical need” for the city.

But Cunningham really lost his argument when Romero stepped in asking for an informal show of hands of people who’ve gotten stuck in the elevator.

For the record, it was most of his colleagues, as well as various staffers who work inside city hall.

1. We noted some irregularities in the results a few weeks ago.