Campaign Briefs

The city of Tucson campaign season is entering the final stretch.
Next Tuesday, Nov. 3, voters will decide the future of the Tucson City
Council and the fate of the Public Safety First Initiative, aka
Proposition 200.

Meanwhile, voters in the Tucson Unified School District will have to
decide whether to give TUSD more money for aging computers and other
educational ventures.

We started out this campaign season back in June by noting that most
citizens don’t care much about city politics, judging from the
generally lousy turnout at the polls. That led to an exploration of
“rational ignorance”—a theory that suggests that most people have
better things to do than learn the ins and outs of local politics, so
they make the rational decision to ignore most of it.

Since then, we’ve introduced you to the candidates, tried (with
varying degrees of success) to find out how they would balance Tucson’s
budget and explained where they stand on the Public Safety First
Initiative. (Democrats are against it; Republicans are for it.) Oh, and
we looked into the big scandal of the campaign season: penis artwork
that was on display at the Museum of Contemporary Art four years ago,
before any of the candidates on the ballot today were even in office.
(Yes, that somehow became an issue.)

If you’ve missed any of it, we’ve got it all available for review at
tucsonweekly.com.

But let’s face it: If you haven’t read up on that stuff already,
you’re probably not interested in the details. So for those of you who
just want a quick summary of what these races are about, we’ve got each
race and ballot initiative explained here—in 300 words or
less.

WHY TO REJECT PROP 200 (IN 300 WORDS OR LESS)

While we support hiring more cops and firefighters, this is the
wrong way to get the job done. Prop 200 would force the city to hire at
least 333 police officers and 70 firefighters over the next five years.
The price tag for the run-up would be $150 million, with annual
recurring costs estimated at more than $63 million a year, according to
an estimate by the city’s Independent Audit and Performance
Commission.

The city right now has a general fund of roughly $420
million—and an expected deficit of $12.6 million or more next
year.

You do the math: The city will either have to slash spending on
everything besides public safety—which already takes up 64
percent of the general fund—or it’s going to have to raise your
taxes.

Plenty of liberals—the Pima County Interfaith Council, the
Sierra Club, the morning daily’s editorial board—oppose the
Public Safety First Initiative, but Prop 200 is also running into stiff
resistance from the business community. Among the groups urging a “no”
vote: The Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, the Metropolitan
Pima Alliance, the Arizona Multihousing Association, Tucson Electric
Power and Cox Cable.

Why are these folks urging you to vote “no” on Prop 200? Because
they understand that the cost will be so high that the council will
wind up raising taxes to pay for it.

That’s not just our conclusion. Nick Dranias of the conservative
Goldwater Institute has stated: “Somewhere, somehow, Tucson taxpayers
will have to pay the bill, and you can bet that will eventually come in
the form of higher taxes.”

Police and firefighters are important, but so are our parks and our
streets. Vote no on Prop 200.

WARD 3 (IN 300 WORDS OR LESS)

Democrat incumbent Karin Uhlich is facing Republican Ben
Buehler-Garcia and Green Party candidate Mary DeCamp.

Uhlich can accurately boast that in her first four years in office,
she supported the hiring of 80 new police officers and 75 new
firefighters, and launched a program to repave residential streets
(that has been suspended this year thanks to the budget woes).

This year, Uhlich supported budget cuts that included five-day
furloughs for city employees and a 15.5 percent cut to outside-agency
funding. She also voted to increase taxes on utility and phone bills,
as well as tanning salons and gym memberships.

Buehler-Garcia, a consultant who typically helps private-sector
clients work with government agencies, says that Uhlich has not been
friendly enough to businesses, has failed in efforts to revitalize
downtown while wasting too much money on Rio Nuevo, and has allowed
Tucson to become an unsafe city (even though crime rates have declined
since she took office).

But Buehler-Garcia has been evasive when it comes to the primary job
of a council member: explaining how he would spend taxpayer dollars
differently.

DeCamp, who launched a late campaign and got on the ballot through a
write-in campaign, has not had much of a presence in the race.

The Tucson Weekly is disappointed that Uhlich has a troubling
tendency to sidestep tough questions and delay difficult budget
decisions. Meanwhile, Buehler-Garcia, while wise in the ways of
government, has embraced the Public Safety First Initiative, which
demonstrates an appalling lack of sensible political judgment. We
instead endorsed the Sonoran hot dog at El Guero Canelo, 2480 N. Oracle
Road.

WARD 5 (IN 300 WORDS OR LESS)

With Democrat Steve Leal stepping down after two decades on the
Tucson City Council, the race in Ward 5 pits Democrat Richard Fimbres
against Republican Shaun McClusky.

Fimbres, who headed up the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety under
Democrat Janet Napolitano, has a long record of public service,
including a stint in the U.S. Army, a long career with the Pima County
Sheriff’s Department and more than a decade on the Pima County
Community College District governing board. He has a long history of
working with Hispanic youth to keep them in school.

McClusky, a real-estate broker and property manager, served four
years in the U.S. Air Force, has sold cars for Jim Click and worked at
a Florida resort owned by Donald Trump.

The Weekly endorsed Fimbres because he has a long record of
civic involvement, while McClusky has a weak grasp of city
government.

WARD 6 (IN 300 WORDS OR LESS)

Democrat Nina Trasoff is wrapping up her first term on the Tucson
City Council. Like Uhlich, Trasoff takes credit for the hiring of 80
new police officers and 75 new firefighters and supporting a
now-suspended program to repave residential streets. And like Uhlich,
she supported budget cuts that included five-day furloughs for city
employees and a 15.5 percent cut to outside-agency funding. She also
voted to increase taxes on utility and phone bills, as well as tanning
salons and gym memberships.

A former television reporter and public-relations maven, Trasoff has
also been focused on downtown revitalization. She says that the work on
downtown is finally beginning to bear fruit, with the reopening of the
Fourth Avenue underpass, the remodeling of the One North Fifth
apartment building, the ongoing construction of a new Martin Luther
King Jr. housing complex, the leasing of the MacArthur Building by
Madden Media, and the recent moves to remodel the Tucson Convention
Center as part of a plan to build a Sheraton hotel.

Her opponent, Republican Steve Kozachik, says that the downtown work
is too little, too late. He says Trasoff squandered tens of millions in
Rio Nuevo dollars on projects that have gone nowhere and is poised to
move forward on a downtown hotel that will be a financial disaster.

Kozachik, who works as director of facility management for the UA
Athletics Department, says he can use his experience to make downtown
projects happen on time and on budget.

The Weekly has been disappointed in many of Trasoff’s
decisions, but we’re equally disappointed by Kozachik’s judgment in
embracing the Public Safety First Initiative. We endorsed Jasper the
marbled polecat at the Reid Park Zoo.

FOLLOWING THE MONEY: THE LATEST ON WHO IS PAYING FOR THE PROP 200 FIGHT (IN 300 WORDS OR LESS)

The supporters of the Public Safety First Initiative have raised six
times as much money as opponents of Prop 200.

The Public Safety First committee has spent more than $354,000 on
the push to persuade voters to force the city to hire more cops and
firefighters, according to campaign-finance reports. The campaign had
raised more than $360,000 as of Oct. 14.

Auto dealer Jim Click has doubled down on his contribution to the
campaign, giving another $50,000 on Oct. 14. Click had already
contributed $50,000 earlier this year.

The Tucson Association of Realtors, which has been the driving force
behind the initiative, also contributed another $10,487. The
International Association of Fire Fighters and the Tucson Police
Officers Association each kicked in an additional $10,000.

Don’t Handcuff Tucson, the political committee that is urging voters
to reject the Public Safety First Initiative, had raised $58,137 as of
Oct. 14.

Don’t Handcuff Tucson raised most of its
funding—$44,842—between Sept. 22 and Oct. 14. The committee
had about $20,000 in the bank at the end of the reporting period.

Among the major contributors to Don’t Handcuff Tucson: legendary
land speculator Don Diamond ($1,000); the Arizona Multihousing
Association ($10,000) and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union
($5,000).

FOLLOWING THE MONEY: THE TUCSON VISION COMMITTEE UNVEILED (IN 300 WORDS OR LESS)

There are not a lot of people contributing to the Tucson Vision
Committee, an independent political committee that is targeting
Democratic candidates in the City Council election.

The committee had raised $39,000 from fewer than 10 contributors as
of Oct. 14.

Roughly three-quarters of the money has come from developer Michael
Goodman and Republican National Committeeman Bruce Ash.

Goodman has given $10,000. He’s the mini-dorm developer who has
raised the ire of homeowners in neighborhoods north of the university
by pushing residential zoning regulations to the limit to build student
housing. He has sued the current City Council for passing regs that
have slowed down his projects.

Ash has given $5,000 and loaned the committee $15,000.

Most of the committee’s money has gone to the advertising firm Moret
and Associates. The committee has paid for television ads attacking the
incumbents as incompetent and is running radio spots featuring irate
citizens who are unhappy with the Democratic City Council.

WHY TO VOTE YES ON PROPS 401 AND 402 (IN 300 WORDS OR
LESS)

The Tucson Unified School District is already facing cuts in state
dollars because of Arizona’s budget crisis—and that situation is
only going to get worse next year, when federal stimulus dollars go
away, and lawmakers no longer have to commit to funding education in
order to get that money from Uncle Sam.

Meanwhile, the computers in TUSD classrooms are woefully
outdated—and if there’s one thing that our kids are going to need
to succeed in the world of tomorrow, it’s knowledge about how to work a
computer.

There’s also money in the package for each school to spend as its
own site council sees fit. That’s a great way for schools to have some
control over their dollars rather than leaving all of the decisions in
the hands of the TUSD administration.

The annual cost: About $70 for a home worth $100,000. C’mon, that’s
about $6 a month. You can afford it. Vote yes.

This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2009.