Welcome to the new economy

Tucson pumps the brakes ... Councilmember fights e-mob ... And the exciting missing minutes.

Predicting where the economy will be 18 months from now is a tough job.

The Tucson City Council learned on Tuesday night that forecasting is more art than science, as revenues coming into the city’s coffers for the first three months of the new fiscal year fell short by $24 million.

While the shortfall could be an outlier of a bad summer, the city can’t wait another three months to find out whether the deficit grows even deeper.

The city adopted a $2.4 billion budget for this fiscal year, so $24 million might seem like a drop in the budget. However, the city’s general fund — money that the city council can move around — is significantly smaller, sitting at about $750 million.

If the city did nothing with the new data, that budget hole could grow to $75 million by next spring,¹ requiring draconian cuts that haven’t been seen since the Great Recession.²

Rather than wait and see how bad it gets, the Tucson City Council is making cuts and contingency plans.

How did we get to this point?

The city had originally projected a 2.5% increase in revenues this fiscal year. Now, Assistant City Manager and Chief Financial Officer Anna Rosenberry says the city should prepare for a 1.5% overall decrease compared to last year.

You can find a full breakdown of how the city plans to save $24 million here, but specific line items may fall short of their targeted goals.

For example, the Tucson Police Department is facing the largest cut and will delay the hiring of additional Community Service Officers and cut $2 million that it had set aside for overtime for patrol officers.

TPD often has to pay out overtime for its officers because of acute staffing shortages. Hiring new officers would alleviate that problem, and it’s still part of the plan, but moving a recruit from the academy to street-ready without supervision takes about 14 months — assuming they don’t wash out.

The parks department might be hit hardest, as it is actively looking to lay off temporary employees. The department’s budget is primarily tied to personnel costs.

The council briefly discussed asking lap swimmers to pay to keep pools open in the winter, as an alternative to closing them outright for six months.

Other potential revenue changes include raising parking rates at the Tucson Convention Center and ending discounts for local nonprofits that use the facility.

Mayor Regina Romero blames the Trump administration for the decline in revenues, saying nationwide ICE raids have hurt Tucson’s tourism industry and many federal workers have been cutting back on spending for months. With the federal shutdown now in its third week, Romero expects revenues to continue to lag.

“Fear of being fired is just dismantling our economy,” Romero said.

The council will now receive monthly budget updates from staff to track the local economy more closely.

Other council actions on Tuesday:

• Councilmembers signed off on the demolition of a building adjacent to the Fox Theatre to allow the popular venue to expand. Some locals protested the planned demolition of the largely vacant property, noting the building is listed as a contributor to the Downtown Tucson National Register Historic District.

• The council directed staff to come up with a plan within 45 days to declare a Housing and Homelessness Emergency. The declaration could ease some red tape for developers looking to build affordable housing.

• Launched a pilot program to allow food trucks and other mobile businesses to operate in the right-of-way at the Silverbell and Camino del Cerro intersection.

The battle continues: House Speaker Mike Johnson is sticking to his guns when it comes to not swearing in Congresswoman-elect Adelita Grijalva. He told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that the complaints from Grijalva and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (who sued Johnson on Tuesday) were a “joke,” “total absurdity,” “utter nonsense,” a “red herring” and “ridiculous.” Johnson said he was following the “Pelosi precedent” and wouldn’t swear in Grijalva until Congress was back in session.

Clear as mud: After University of Arizona President Suresh Garimella issued a long-awaited, but ultimately unclear, decision about whether the UA would join a compact with the Trump administration, UA officials declined to clarify what they meant. A UA spokesperson referred the Arizona Daily Star’s Prerana Sannappanavar to a statement Garimella made in his letter to campus, but not in his letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon. Garimella said “the university has not agreed to the terms outlined in the draft proposal,” but he didn’t outright reject the deal.

You haven’t outright rejected our deal to become a paid subscriber, which gives us hope that today is the day you’ll click that button.

Back again: Tucson City Councilmember Lane Santa Cruz and their staff had to relocate after Santa Cruz’s comments were misinterpreted in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder, which led to a backlash from Kirk’s followers, Lookout’s Tori Gantz reports. It was the first time the Arizona Armed Militia had posted on their Facebook page since 2022, and it was a worrying example of once-dormant, far-right extremist groups resurfacing in Arizona after Kirk’s death.

“The misrepresentation of my Instagram story has resulted in an online mob and direct threats toward me, my family, and my staff,” Santa Cruz said.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane: It’s a comet that astronomers on Mount Lemmon discovered, which should be visible to the naked eye this week, the Star’s Henry Brean reports. Comet Lemmon (yep, that’s its name) was first spotted by the Catalina Sky Survey in January and it flew by Earth on Monday at a distance of about 55 million miles. It should grow brighter until October 27 and be “backyard visible” for Tucsonans who look toward the Big Dipper before sunset.

Data centers incoming: A company owned by Beale Infrastructure (the developers of Project Blue) submitted applications to build data centers in Marana last week, KGUN’s Madison Thomas reports. Fremont Peak Properties wants to build data centers at two 300-acre sites south of Pinal Airpark Road and west of Interstate 10. Marana officials are reviewing the applications to see if they jibe with a town ordinance approved last December. Nearby property owners will be notified of the projects and will get a chance to speak at a neighborhood meeting, followed by public hearings.

We’ve solved the mystery behind the few missing minutes from the official YouTube recording of Tuesday’s Tucson City Council meeting.

The culprit? Councilman Paul Cunningham — though not for dropping George Carlin’s famous seven dirty words.

Cunningham wasn’t swearing. He was cheerleading.

When he got a little too amped about Proposition 417 — AKA Plan Tucson — the city lawyers hit the “magic word” panic button.

In Arizona, city council members can talk about a ballot measure in a meeting, but they can’t tell people how to vote for it using government resources — that’s illegal, per ARS 9-500.14 — which carries a maximum fine of $5,000 per offense.

Savvy readers will remember this isn’t the first time that this has happened in recent memory.

Back in January, we noted that the city cut a few seconds out of another meeting after Councilman Kevin Dahl advocated for Prop 414 during a council meeting.

1. And that’s assuming the problem doesn’t get worse over the next few months.

2. For a point of reference, the city was forced to cut back on maintenance, stop road repairs, and lay off a lot of employees during the Great Recession. That shortfall was $51 million, or just slightly more than half of what the city is facing now.