Tucson Weekly: Dollar Dazed (March 25

The City of Tucson Spends Big Bucks On All Sorts Of Things.
By Dave Devine
FROM AIR-conditioning repair to the purchase of rodents, fish and bugs as snacks for zoo animals, the City of Tucson contracts out millions of dollars of labor and materials every year.
Hiring more than 400 private companies to provide goods and services, the city relies on outside firms to do everything from spending $7,000 to track the tiny audience that watches Tucson's Cable Channel 12 television station to notifying thousands of households of upcoming roadwork.
The City's Procurement Department coordinates these contracts and purchases--for things ranging from bottled water to ice, color-coded file folders to pulverized steer manure.
Currents Several of the city's contracts are with out-of-town agencies. It hires a Washington, D.C., firm to represent it in the nation's capital for $143,500 a year and pays a Phoenix company $50,000 a year to lobby the state Legislature on its behalf.
The city also has two Phoenix law firms on the payroll to push its water interests. One, Sacks & Tierney, has a $40,000 contract, but it wasn't good enough for Tucson Water, which hired its own lobbying firm, Steptoe & Johnson, at $50,000 a year.
Locally, the city farms out numerous jobs for its convention center. These include crowd management, custodial services, fountain maintenance, advertising, catering and decoration services.
It even tried to contract out the publication of a Tucson Convention Center magazine, but that effort fell flat. Last fall, after several previous unsuccessful attempts, TCC officials signed an agreement with Sierra Design & Publishing of Sierra Vista to produce 10,000 copies of a glossy monthly magazine for a two-year period. TCC staff thought the magazine could help promote events. Sierra Design wasn't going to be paid by the city, but would retain the advertising revenue they sold.
TCC staff praised the first issue, but then problems arose. For the next issue, which was to promote the Gem & Mineral Show, Sierra Design proposed a cover featuring Tucson's totally tattooed "Scary Guy" biting a purple stone. David Tygart, owner of Sierra Design, says the TCC staff approved of this concept, but then reversed its position.
"The city changed its mind several times" on issues like the cover design, Tygart says. "The line of who had the final say-so on the magazine was never quite clear. The contract should have been clearer on that."
Tygart looked at the possibility of selling enough advertising to make the magazine profitable and concluded he couldn't do it, given TCC staff involvement. So he canceled the contract after one issue.
Tygart believes only a major publisher will be able to afford to produce the magazine without a city subsidy. But those publishers, Tygart says, are already issuing similar types of magazines for the Tucson market.
Clarence Boykins, assistant director of the Convention Center, says he stopped the "Scary Guy" cover because he didn't think it was appropriate publicity for the Gem & Mineral Show. The magazine, he says, was intended to be for and about the TCC as a marketing tool. But for now, the Center has no magazine, and no likely future prospects for producing one.
DESPITE THE MAGAZINE mess, the city contracts with other businesses to clean up. It employs custodial services under seven different contracts and hires two janitorial firms besides. It also has five maintenance contracts for items ranging from gym equipment to the Santa Cruz River Park.
In certain select neighborhoods, the city is involved with special cleanups of other messes, and that costs the taxpayers a bundle. When these areas were annexed into Tucson in 1990 and later, agreements were made about continuing the old-fashioned, hand-loaded garbage service the residents were accustomed to receiving. Transferring these neighborhoods to the city's automated garbage pickups was put on hold.
The city now pays $67,000 a year to collect garbage from the 500 or so households in the Lazy Creek, Town & Country and Creekside annexation areas. But the era of doing things the old-fashioned way may be coming to an end.
According to Eliseo Garza, director of Tucson's Solid Waste Department, a request has been made to buy three new automated garbage trucks in the upcoming fiscal year. If the City Council approves this purchase, at least some of these hand-loaded garbage routes will be eliminated.
In addition to its own lobbying firm, Tucson Water uses at least 17 private companies to perform work or supply services. They contract for a water conservation youth education program, an annual water rate study which always seems to conclude rate increases are necessary, and treatment chemicals for both groundwater as well as the foul stuff coming from the CAP canal. The utility also has a high-priced firm, Kaneen Advertising, to coordinate its public relations campaign, which some consider to be a blatant attempt to propagandize the populace into accepting CAP water in their homes. The cost: $100,000 a year.
The city is also looking into the effects of potential electric utility deregulation. Under a $70,000 contract, a private consulting firm, owned by local attorney Loretta Humphrey, is looking at the impacts of deregulation on city government as well as the general public. Perhaps she will conclude that utility competition will lead to cheaper rates for all.
Whatever. At least this is one city contract where the highest bidder didn't get the job. Of the three finalists, one charged $185 an hour, another $175. The city chose a firm which bills at $75 an hour. It's still a lot of money for a minimum-wage town, but every little bit helps.

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