Balancing Act

Politicians love to talk about waste in government.

Take Republican Steve Kozachik. He says his Democratic opponent,
Councilwoman Nina Trasoff, should have cut more spending in the city’s
$420 million general fund, and that she should have hired more cops and
firefighters during this year’s budget deliberations.

On his Web page, Kozachik complains: “The mayor and council will not
lead in cutting unnecessary subsidies to outside agencies or squeeze
even 2 percent of the fat from the city budget to fully fund public
safety.”

But offer Kozachik a list of the city’s spending on those
“unnecessary subsidies to outside agencies,” and he gets all weak in
the knees. He doesn’t want to look over the list, because he says he’s
already familiar with it. Ask him to cite
something—anything—he’d cut, and he declines.

“That’s part of a budgetary conversation, not a line-by-line
conversation,” says Kozachik, who suggests the city should hand off
outside-agency funding to a nonprofit agency, so council members don’t
get to say where tax dollars are going, “because that’s a vote-buying
issue.”

Republican Ben Buehler-Garcia, who hopes to unseat Democrat Karin
Uhlich, is equally reluctant to review a list of spending on outside
agencies.

“I’m not even going to look, because you can’t have that
conversation just looking at a sheet of paper. I mean, there are
clearly things that … ,” Buehler-Garcia says before pausing. “I’m not
going to go there.”

Buehler-Garcia adds that he generally supports funding for
social-service programs that help the homeless and the elderly, but
that “in difficult economic times, you have to set priorities.”

Republican Shaun McClusky, who is facing Democrat Richard Fimbres in
the race to replace the retiring Steve Leal in Ward 5, is the only
Republican in the race who embraces the opportunity to look over the
outside-agency budget. He warns that there will be blood if he’s
elected.

“We’re going to have to do cuts across the board, and we’re going to
have to do deep cuts,” McClusky says.

In particular, McClusky would cut the $718,000 that the city now
spends on public-access television and make an effort to lease out the
channel space. (Whether Cox Cable would allow such a sublease remains
unknown, but McClusky figures it’s worth finding out.) He’d also cut
some of the $1.1 million in funding for TREO, the economic-development
agency that’s funded by local governments and businesses.

“They’re supposed to encourage economic development in Tucson,”
McClusky says. “I really haven’t seen a whole lot of that, with our
sales-tax revenues being depleted by $68 million.”

McClusky’s pair of specific cuts aside, all three Republicans
struggle to say how their spending priorities would be different from
the current council’s priorities, other than to say they’d spend more
on public safety and pothole repairs.

In fact, they’re urging voters to ensure that the city has to spend
significantly more money on public safety. All three Republicans have
embraced Proposition 200, the Public Safety First Initiative that would
force the city to spend an additional $63 million a year on police
officers and firefighters once it’s fully implemented in five years,
according to estimates from the city’s Independent Audit and
Performance Commission.

However, they don’t come up with savings within the city’s budget to
pay for it; instead, they suggest that with the right economic
policies, small businesses can thrive and provide enough sales taxes to
pay for the initiative.

But the city’s budget projections aren’t so rosy. City Manager Mike
Letcher has projected that the city will have to cut at least $12.6
million more in spending next year, $10.2 million in fiscal year 2012,
and $6.4 million in fiscal year 2013 before the city’s budget
stabilizes.

Over that same time period, the Public Safety First
Initiative—if it passes—is expected to cost the city an
additional $46.6 million.

Buehler-Garcia says he hasn’t had an opportunity to dig into the
city budget; Kozachik says he has unsuccessfully tried to make sense of
it, but he concluded that it’s just too complicated.

“It shouldn’t be this hard,” says Kozachik.

It’s certainly not unusual for candidates to complain about the
budget priorities of incumbents, particularly in tough economic times.
Both Nina Trasoff and Karin Uhlich did the same thing when they were
running for office four years ago.

In fact, Kozachik uses the exact same words to describe the budget
that Trasoff used four years ago. The billion-dollar budget, with money
coming from myriad sources, is a “shell game.”

In 2005, Trasoff and Uhlich complained that the Republicans then in
office—Fred Ronstadt and Kathleen Dunbar—deserved to be
kicked out, because they had established a $12-a-month trash fee,
raised the cost of Parks and Recreation classes, and created fees for
the KIDCO after-school program. Both said they’d try to reduce the
“garbage tax,” because it had been set too high.

Four years after beating Ronstadt and Dunbar, both Trasoff and
Uhlich have done little to change what the Republicans put in place.
They have supported not reducing, but increasing the monthly trash fee
by 50 cents (although they also made it easier for people to apply for
a waiver to not pay it). They never did anything to reduce KIDCO fees,
which run $100 for the school year and $75 for the summer session.
(KIDCO also offers a sliding-scale discount for those who have trouble
paying even a few dollars a day.)

Right after they were sworn into office in 2005, however, Uhlich and
Trasoff did join the other Democrats on the City Council to vote to
reverse the increases on Parks and Rec fees for adult-leisure classes,
leagues in sports such as softball and basketball, and swimming-pool
admissions.

That was easy enough when the economy was doing well. In fact,
during Trasoff and Uhlich’s first few years, the city had enough
money—thanks, in major part, to the “garbage tax”—to hire
80 new police officers, 75 new firefighters and support staff for those
departments. The Transportation Department also managed to repave
hundreds of miles of residential streets.

But when it came time to cut the budget this year, the city had to
put a halt to expanding the police and fire staff, and had to curtail
the repair of residential streets.

Parks and Recreation Director Fred Gray was forced to cut staff,
eliminate about half of the sports leagues and leisure classes, cut
back the hours of recreation centers and close several pools for the
winter. Gray is now putting together a new plan to hike the fees that
Trasoff and Uhlich lowered, and the council members say they lean
toward supporting the increases.

“I think I have a better sense of the long view now,” Uhlich says.
“It’s not that people don’t want the service available. … If they can
afford to pay more, they’re willing to pay more.”

On this topic, their Republican opponents agree. Kozachik and
Buehler-Garcia say that park fees do need to go up as part of a
budget-balancing plan.

But Kozachik and Buehler-Garcia are more critical of the steps that
Trasoff and Uhlich took to balance the budget after the economic
slowdown left the city facing a $68 million shortfall in this budget
year.

The council trimmed city spending by reducing the number of
employees through attrition and by asking everyone, with the exception
of cops and firefighters, to take a one-week unpaid furlough. They also
refinanced some debt and took advantage of some other one-time
windfalls.

But they were still facing a budget gap, so Trasoff and Uhlich
supported a plan to raise the taxes on phone, electric and gas bills,
and to create new taxes on tanning salons and gym memberships.

The Republicans say those tax hikes were the wrong way to go, but
they offer few alternatives in the way of corresponding cuts.

In the end, most voters aren’t going to consider the inner workings
of the budget when they cast a ballot. They’re more likely to be swayed
by the national mood.

Four years ago, Trasoff and Uhlich tapped into Democratic anger
against the Bush administration. Their attacks on the “garbage tax” and
the KIDCO fees that they left in place were really just a way to
energize Democrats to come to the polls and kick out Republican
incumbents. It helped reverse years of Democratic complacency and
Republican success in a city where there are nearly seven Democrats for
every four Republicans.

But this year, the national mood has shifted. Republicans are
energized by what they see as a socialist takeover by the Obama
administration. They’re also being spurred on by the idea of supporting
cops and firefighters through Prop 200 and are angry about the slow
pace and high spending on the Rio Nuevo downtown redevelopment
project.

So it’s hardly surprising to see the Republicans beating the drums
of fiscal mismanagement.

But voters who are hoping to see big changes in how the city spends
dollars shouldn’t expect big changes from the Republicans.

Asked if he agrees with how the Democrats have allocated funding for
outside agencies, Kozachik says he would do one thing differently: He’d
have been more generous to the Humane Society of Southern
Arizona.

“I thought it was extremely irresponsible for them to cut the Humane
Society budget, because to me, that’s a public-health and safety
issue,” Kozachik says. “That’s just wrong.”

In other words: Despite his criticism of spending on outside
agencies, the only change Kozachik is willing to publicly stand behind
involves spending more money.

WARD 3: Karin Uhlich vs. Ben Buehler-Garcia
vs. Mary DeCamp

Democrat Karin Uhlich

Karin Uhlich says her biggest accomplishments in her first term
include accelerating the collection of impact fees on commercial
development, getting key meth ingredients off of pharmacy shelves, and
launching a sustainability plan that included funding for more police
officers and firefighters, residential street repair and the Parks and
Recreation Department.

“The sustainability plan really served as a good guide,” says
Uhlich, who also serves as executive director of the Southwest Center
for Economic Integrity, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reining
in the payday-loan industry and helping people establish a firmer
financial base.

When the nation’s economic slowdown hit the city’s budget and cuts
had to be made, the city’s sustainability plan had to be put on hold.
As a result, Uhlich has been under fire by supporters of the Public
Safety First Initiative, who complain that she abandoned her promise to
fund public safety.

Uhlich says public safety remains a priority, as demonstrated by the
fact that cops and firefighters were not asked to take the same
five-day furlough as other city employees.

In the fight over balancing this year’s budget, Uhlich was one of
the biggest supporters of City Manager Mike Letcher’s proposal for a
tax on rent payments, but the new tax couldn’t get enough support among
council members to pass.

Uhlich’s biggest impact on the city this year was leading the charge
to fire Mike Hein, the city manager who the council dismissed on a 4-3
vote in April. Uhlich said that she had lost “trust and confidence” in
Hein.

The decision to ax Hein brought criticism from the city’s business
community, which viewed Hein as a competent manager wrestling with a
dysfunctional City Council.

With Mayor Bob Walkup wrapping up his third term next year, Uhlich
is rumored to be eyeing the mayor’s office. While she downplays that
talk publicly, she has said she’s not committed to serving out her full
four-year term in Ward 3.

“I don’t know what doors will open to me in the future, if any,”
Uhlich says. “I think a lot of people in public office get pulled off
track by looking toward whatever ambition might lie ahead. And so I
don’t do that.”

Uhlich has been endorsed by a wide range of Democratic elected
officials, including Congressman Raúl Grijalva, Congresswoman
Gabrielle Giffords and Attorney General Terry Goddard. She’s also the
pick of several local labor unions, as well as the Sierra Club,
Arizonans for Responsible Lending and Arizona Women’s Political
Caucus.

Republican Ben Buehler-Garcia

Ben Buehler-Garcia says he got into the race for the Ward 3 seat
because the city is on the wrong track. He says the level of crime is
too high; businesses have to jump through too many hoops; and too many
streets have potholes.

“People don’t feel safe in their homes and businesses anymore,”
Buehler-Garcia says.

Buehler-Garcia moved to Tucson to attend the UA and study criminal
justice. But he ended up abandoning his plans for a career in law
enforcement and instead went to work at the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber
of Commerce, where he worked as a spokesman and lobbied various
government agencies.

Buehler-Garcia eventually opened up his own consulting business,
helping clients negotiate the choppy waters of government.

He’s been involved in a wide range of community activities,
including efforts to retain Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and
spring-training baseball. (Buehler-Garcia says he would have been
inclined to spend as much as $20 million on improvements on city-owned
Hi Corbett Field in hopes of keeping the Colorado Rockies in
Tucson.)

Buehler-Garcia complains that Uhlich sometimes stands in the way of
economic-development opportunities. He points out that she was the only
council member to vote against an infill-development plan near Kino
Parkway and Interstate 10 that would include a UA research park,
housing and a big-box store.

Buehler-Garcia’s endorsements include the Tucson Metropolitan
Chamber of Commerce, Tucson Association of Realtors, Southern Arizona
Home Builders Association, Tucson Police Officers Association, Arizona
Builders’ Alliance and the Southern Arizona Lodging and Resort
Association.

Green Mary DeCamp

Mary DeCamp wants you to know the good times are over—a little
secret the Democrats and Republicans don’t want you to know.

“Our planet is changing,” DeCamp says. “It’s getting warmer all the
time. Scientists agree that we are unsustainable. We have got to change
our behavior.”

DeCamp, who has spent much of her life pursuing higher education or
working on the UA campus, says her campaign platforms include
retrofitting Tucson homes to be more energy-efficient through an effort
that would involve mentors leading neighborhood co-ops; raising water
rates, particularly for residents outside of the city; and creating a
local currency.

“I think we should limit growth,” DeCamp says. “We should take
measures to roll back our population so that we’re within sustainable
limits.”

While she adores Uhlich, DeCamp is skeptical about the Democratic
incumbent’s politics. She complains that Uhlich supports widening Grant
Road instead of encouraging more bicycling, and that Uhlich failed to
reduce the trash-collection fee established by Republicans.

“She’s my favorite one on the council,” DeCamp says. “But she’s not
Green. She hasn’t stood up to corporate interests. She does buy into
this idea that growth and development can save us.”

WARD 5: Richard Fimbres vs. Shaun McClusky

Democrat Richard Fimbres

Richard Fimbres, who grew up in Ward 5 and played football at Tucson
High School, credits his parents for inspiring him to pursue a career
in public service. His father, a railroad worker with Southern Pacific,
and his mother, a homemaker, “taught us to give something back, to pay
it forward.”

His résumé reflects a long history in public service.
He served 27 years in the military, including two years on active duty
as a military policeman in the Army. He has worked for the Pima County
Sheriff’s Department for more than two decades, both as a reserve
deputy and a program manager. He headed up the Governor’s Office of
Highway Safety under Democrat Janet Napolitano.

On the side, Fimbres has been involved in efforts to keep Hispanic
kids in school and away from drugs and alcohol, which culminated in a
position on the Pima County Community College District governing
board.

“We wanted to start planting the seeds with middle school and high
school kids that we wanted them to end up in a higher-learning
institution, instead of ending up in our jails, in our cemeteries or on
the streets.”

Those efforts led to Fimbres being named the Tucson Metropolitan
Chamber of Commerce’s Man of the Year in 2001, although this year, the
chamber has endorsed his Republican opponent.

Fimbres is new to city issues, although his wife, Mary Fimbres, has
long worked as an aide to current Ward 5 Councilman Steve Leal.

Fimbres says the city needs to pursue more federal stimulus dollars
while the economy recovers. He says the road ahead won’t be easy for
the city.

“These are hard times,” Fimbres says. “People are blaming the
council for a lot of the economic problems. But the sales tax is
tanking, and if you look at every community and every city, it has
impacted everybody nationwide.”

Fimbres has been endorsed by a wide range of Democratic elected
officials, including Congressman Raúl Grijalva, Congresswoman
Gabrielle Giffords, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik and outgoing
Ward 5 Councilman Steve Leal. He’s also the pick of several local labor
unions and the Sierra Club.

Republican Shaun McClusky

Republican Shaun McClusky doesn’t have much of a political pedigree.
He hasn’t worked on campaigns, lobbied politicians or even voted in a
city election.

He’s countering his lack of involvement by saying that he’s not “a
career politician.”

McClusky’s career path has followed a different trail. A Chicago
native, McClusky has worked at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Country Club
in Florida, served a four-year stint in the U.S. Air Force, sold cars
for Jim Click and now runs his own real-estate brokerage and
property-management company, Rincon Ventures.

McClusky, who was recruited through a mass recorded phone message
that the Pima County Republican Party sent to Republicans in Ward 5,
says he got into the race “so we can change the path the city has been
traveling on.”

Like his fellow Republicans, McClusky criticizes the council for
failing to spend more money on police officers, firefighters and street
repairs. He says that the city has wasted money on downtown
redevelopment and should save more money by turning off the lights at
city facilities like the Tucson Convention Center.

His own budget prescriptions often sound a little bizarre, such as
his vow to cut corporate income taxes, which the city does not
collect.

In September, McClusky said that the city had enough money in its
budget to pay for more cops and firefighters without significant cuts
or tax hikes. But last week, he said the city would have to make deep
cuts across the board to balance next year’s budget.

McClusky’s endorsements include the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of
Commerce, Tucson Association of Realtors, Southern Arizona Home
Builders Association, Tucson Police Officers Association, Arizona
Builders’ Alliance and the Southern Arizona Lodging and Resort
Association.

WARD 6: Nina Trasoff vs. Steve Kozachik

Democrat Nina Trasoff

As she finishes her first term on the Tucson City Council, Democrat
Nina Trasoff says her experience as a TV newswoman has helped her “to
listen and to ask questions. I think one of my greatest skills is the
ability to ask questions and to think outside the box.”

But her public-relations background hasn’t helped her spin a better
view of downtown redevelopment as projects have collapsed—most
notably, a planned science center and other cultural attractions on the
west bank of the Santa Cruz River, and more recently, a complex land
swap around the Rialto Theatre block. State lawmakers have begun asking
tough questions about how the city has spent $160 million in Rio Nuevo
dollars.

Trasoff says she unfairly gets a bad rap on Rio Nuevo. She points to
projects like the Fourth Avenue underpass, progress with the urban
streetcar, new restaurants such as Maynards in the Historic Train
Depot, the rehabilitation of the One North Fifth apartment building,
ongoing construction on new public housing and apartment buildings, and
the leasing of the MacArthur Building to Madden Publishing.

She says the work now underway at the Tucson Convention Center is
the first step toward building a downtown hotel that will allow Tucson
to keep the Gem and Mineral Show and host new conventions.

As she looks back over her four years of representing midtown’s Ward
6, Trasoff is most proud of “making sure that the door is always open
to people of all persuasions to share their views.”

As an example, Trasoff cites her work with the business community on
an update of the city’s land-use code.

She’s found an unlikely ally in Michael Guymon, who served as chief
of staff to Fred Ronstadt, the Republican councilman defeated by
Trasoff in 2005.

Guymon, who is now executive director of the Metropolitan Pima
Alliance, says that Trasoff’s office has helped rework the process of
rehabbing old buildings for new uses.

“The experience has been very positive,” says Guymon. “It’s really
their willingness to sit down with a lot of the property owners and
business owners to come up with viable solutions to fix this
problem.”

Trasoff has been endorsed by a wide range of Democratic elected
officials, including Congressman Raúl Grijalva, Congresswoman
Gabrielle Giffords and Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik. She’s also
the pick of several local labor unions, as well as the Sierra Club,
Arizona Multihousing Association and Arizona Women’s Political
Caucus.

Republican Steve Kozachik

Steve Kozachik can’t really say where he first got the bug to do
charity work.

“I don’t know what got me to want to do it,” Kozachik says. “When
something grabs you that’s bigger than yourself, you don’t let go of
it.”

Over the last decade, Kozachik has built orphanages in Zambia. He’s
constructed homes in tsunami-ravaged Sri Lanka. He’s driven relief
supplies into Baton Rouge in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

“It’s so much more meaningful than the stuff we normally focus on,”
Kozachik says.

But Kozachik is not very charitable while talking about Nina
Trasoff, the Democrat he hopes to unseat in November.

He says Trasoff has alienated the business community. He points out
that she didn’t follow through on her promise to voters to get rid of
the monthly trash-collection fee that former Ward 6 Councilman Fred
Ronstadt put into place. And she’s botched the redevelopment of
downtown, he says.

“Nina Trasoff asked to be the queen of Rio Nuevo,” Kozachik says.
“Just like she told Fred Ronstadt that she was going to hang the
garbage fee like a collar around his neck—she can wear this thing
like a necklace if she wants to. It has been an absolute failure.”

Kozachik, who works for the UA Athletics Department and oversaw the
recent construction of the Richard Jefferson Gymnasium and the
Hillenbrand Aquatics Center east of McKale Center, says he knows what
needs to be done with Rio Nuevo money downtown: The city should foster
more charter schools, university-student housing and a youth-sports
facility.

Kozachik is ready to scrap plans for a new enclosed arena to replace
the aging Tucson Convention Center facility and predicts that the
city’s plans to build a new hotel downtown are doomed.

“That thing is never going to get built,” Kozachik says.

Kozachik’s endorsements include the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of
Commerce, Tucson Association of Realtors, Southern Arizona Home
Builders Association, Tucson Police Officers Association, Arizona
Builders’ Alliance and the Southern Arizona Lodging and Resort
Association.

The Outside Agency Budget: What Would You
Cut?

The city of Tucson is spending $12.2 million of its $420 million
general fund this year on so-called outside agencies—nonprofit
groups and organizations that generally fall outside of the city’s core
services of police, fire, parks and transportation. The funding was
approved by current council members Nina Trasoff and Karin Uhlich, who
reduced the funding by 10 percent last year and 15 percent in the
current budget year.

The Republicans haven’t shared many cuts that they’d make. Steve
Kozachik shared one change with us: He’d spend more on the
Humane Society. Ben Buehler-Garcia declined to mention any cuts. Shaun
McClusky says he’d cut funding to Access Tucson and TREO, and trim
funding to some of the festivals.

How about you, citizen? How much would you cut to provide more money
to cops, firefighters and pothole repair?

This article appears in Oct 15-21, 2009.