If you’ve driven down 22nd Street or Kolb Road or Tucson Boulevard lately, you may have noticed something: These roads don’t suck.

That’s because Tucsonans have said yes to road bonds and a temporary sales tax in recent years—and as a result, long-neglected roads are being fixed.

Here’s the deal: Road repairs are not free. And you can blame our road problems on whatever you want—misplaced priorities, a hangover from too many years of go-go growth without impact fees, the repeated diversion of gas taxes by the state government—but the bottom line is: Pima County estimates bringing all the roads up to par will cost somewhere around a billion dollars.

This is a not a problem that will be solved overnight or by not funding a few soccer fields or whatever other easy solution that someone is trying to sell you.

It’s going to take one thing: Money.

Pima County has studied this issue ad nauseam. Sure, it would be great to hike the gas tax so that drivers pay for roads, or the sales tax so that tourists share the burden, or the something-other-people-pay tax in order to raise money for road repair. But state lawmakers have no appetite to raise gas taxes (despite the looming $62 billion shortfall to keep our highway system in order through 2035). The federal government won’t be sending a lot of money to help us fix our major arterials, our collector streets or our residential roads. And, sadly, Mexico isn’t going to pay for it, either.

This one is on Pima County residents.

Here’s the good news: We can do it without increasing our tax rates. Because Pima County has been paying down bond debt at a rapid clip, it can now put more on the credit card without needing to hike tax rates. And while borrowing money to fix roads is hardly an optimal strategy, these will be short-term loans (on average, the debt will be paid back in roughly 3.5 years) so the interest payments will not be crippling.

The funding will be spread throughout the municipalities based on how much money they pay in property taxes, so the City of Tucson will get $200 million, unincorporated Pima County will get $167 million, Marana will get $26 million, Oro Valley will get $23 million, Sahuarita will get $12 million and South Tucson will get $1.8 million.

In the last 12 years, voters have said yes to three ballot measures to pay for transportation improvements.

You’ve said yes to a half-cent sales tax for the Regional Transportation Authority, which has led to major road widening, transit projects, bike lanes and pedestrian features. The money has been spent without any major scandals.

You’ve said yes to a road bond package for the City of Tucson that repaired many of Tucson’s major streets, ahead of schedule and under budget.

You’ve said yes to temporary half-cent sales tax in the City of Tucson that is continuing the work started by the road bonds.

Now it’s time to say yes one more time and get to work on everything from major streets to residential roads. The $430 million worth of repairs in this package is a major down-payment on the work this community needs to get the remaining roads fixed.

Better roads mean a better quality of life for those of us who live here. Better roads mean it’s easier to bring new jobs to Pima County. Better roads mean more visitors will see us as a great place to vacation and bring their tourist dollars. And fixing those roads creates jobs for people who live here now.

The business community supports this. The tourism sector supports this. The firefighters support this. The Libs here at the Tucson Weekly support this.

The people who are against this are the same people who spend their time tearing down this place we call home. You can ride with them or you can ride with us. Sure, the ride with us will be little more expensive, but it’s gonna be a lot smoother.

Vote Yes on Prop 463.

An earlier version of this editorial had an incorrect figure for the total amount of the bond package.

This article appears in Sep 20-26, 2018.

18 replies on “Hell Yes on Prop 463!”

  1. Smoke and mirrors: The bond money will not cover the anticipated $1.5 million in increased maintenance costs in just the first year, and the ten year plan actually only covers the first five years, after which another bond election will be necessary.

    The County Administrator has been touting that there will be no increase in property taxes with this bond measure. That is not true. First, taxes are currently scheduled to go down as existing bonds are paid off. That wont happen and the secondary property tax rate will remain the same. But: projected growth in the secondary property tax base increased assessments will raise the rate from between 3.21 percent and 4.68 percent yearly (see Section 5.2). So: no tax increase but you pay higher taxes. Smoke and mirrors.

    Section 4.2.1 of the ordinance states the overall goal for road repairs is to fully repair and preserve all 1891 miles of paved County maintained roadways within ten yearsrepairing the worst of these roads within five yearsApproximately 70 percent of the road miles are in failed or poor condition.

    Section 4.2.4 states, however, that by implementing the County Road Repair Plan in the first five years, it is anticipated that the Countys share of bond proceeds will be sufficient to repair or reconstruct 560 miles of the worst roads.

    Do the math: 70 percent of 1891 miles is 1324 miles, and 560 miles is just 42 percent of that, less than half, of the roads in failed or poor conditions. And the math, along with common sense, says that another bond election in five years of equal money still wont get the job done.

  2. I think we need to add something to the road repair packages and contracts that the City and County issue. Rather than go with the lowest cost contractor, give a certain percentage of the total bid package to those contractors that will Guarantee the road surface for a 12 to 15 year period. Currently, Contracts give credit to Minority Owned Businesses, Women Owned Businesses, Certified Small Businesses, now may be the time to add Businesses that guarantee their work. Then we don’t get work like the repaving of Miracle Mile and Oracle that has already deteriorated to where it needs a complete redo.

  3. So nice to see #LyingAlly ‘s flying monkey boy pop up.
    Delusional as ever, but good job repeating your Mistress’ mantra!

  4. Which roads would be repaired, which would be rebuilt? There are NO specifics (as usual) and NO guarantees that the funding will stay on road improvements.

    (Sorry, bikers, we don’t need to pass ROAD repairs, only to see funds diverted to more work on the Loop. If you want more bike paths, put up a proposition for that work).

    The County cannot be trusted to perform repairs to the roads. More than 20 years of history proves that.

    Vote NO on Proposition 463.

  5. Thank you N&, our local leaders have all but guaranteed a no vote on any bond elections because of the level of dishonesty and conversion. They had the money to fix them and chose to spend it elsewhere. Try telling that to your mortgage company. Your house would be taken. Take the power away from these people.

  7. Recent road improvements this Summer has been nothing short of amazing. In a few weeks time, Swan, Craycroft, Sunrise and parts of hacienda del Sol ands Pontatoc have all been resealed/ paved. This process costs less than new paving but works well and its quick and efficient. I am impressed. I don’t know if they are done or more to come. But it was done in the Summer with minimal disruption to traffic considering the extent of the repairs. So I vote to give them the money to continue.

    Also, the last part of this article talks about $430 billion in repairs. Shouldn’t that be $430 million?

  8. When will our county neighborhood roads be repaired? They are made up of pothole- patch- bump- crack – a dirt road might be better lol. I think mine may be scheduled for 2025….But hey, let’s widen Broadway, the road to now where and tear down a local treasure Mexican food Restaurant-Lerua’s (and give them pennies for their building and land) but yuppie hangouts and give them a “commuter train” to play with. Tucson is really starting
    to suck.

  9. ‘Dats how socialism works DAZ. We elect them to pick the winners and losers rather than a level playing field and equal opportunity.

  12. Yes we need the roads repaired and maintained. BUT, we need transparency and a good plan with clear projects and sequencing. To just dump money into a swamp usually means just more gators.

  13. I would consider voting yes if the county had a mechanism for letting the residents decide which roads get fixed. But I have no confidence in our county to use the funds responsibly.
    I would rather not add to county debt, instead pay it down. A county without debt and in good fiscal standing doesnt need federal funds, and can give the middle finger to presidents who want to infringe on our rights by threatening to take away federal money. We dont need your money!

  14. Yes, fix the existing roads, but as long as we support urban sprawl, and car-scaled infrastructure for it, we will build more roads than we can maintain. It’s unsustainable. Look at all the new developments south of I-10 and out in Vail. Massive, expensive infrastructure extends hundreds of miles with no tax base to pay for its maintenance.

  15. Complete sophistry!

    We have had no less than 3 “temporary” sales tax increases since 2008. We were told the first one was temporary only to find out it was permanent. The city and county tell us its temporary to assuage voter to support the sales tax increase.

    Tucson has a history of lying to the voters when it comes to road repairs. They repeatedly over the last 30 years have used road funds for their pet projects which have nothing to do with roads.

    In one city election some 20+ years ago, the whole entire city council was replaced because of the bait and switch lies. Voters have had enough then as we do now.

    I have often wondered why, despite the massive increases in taxes we still have the worst roads ever. I have been looking for financial data from other comparable municipalities as to their use of road repair funds as I suspect there is massive fraud and corruption, and perhaps outright theft of the funds here locally.

    There are many schemes known to do this. One way would be to grossly inflate the repair bills only to receive back door payoffs from the contractors for the contracts.

    Our roads have been an ongoing problem for decades. I have had comments from out of town visitors why our roads are such a mess. Phoenix by contrast, has excellent roads which are routinely maintained.

    Although not a part of this discussion but related, Tucson has been consistently controlled by the Dems for a very long time. Pima County has a national reputation for massive voter and election fraud. The county outright rejected a ruling from the State Supreme Court to have our elections forensically examined and nothing has been done since.

  16. What’s really “tearing down this place we call home” is the consumption of fossil fuels. I would vote yes on a proposition to fund more electric streetcars (especially on Broadway and Speedway), all-electric buses, solar nev’s and zev’s and charging stations for them, more bicycle lanes and making the grid completely solar-powered. It is the 21st century and we are losing our life-support system, yet we are still cruising around in cars powered with 19th century fuels. I’ll ride with the mass transit.

  17. Wow! 47 “dislikes” when I posted the link to the actual proposition and Huckelberry’s memo so people could see for themselves that 1) there will be another bond vote in 5 years; 2) there will be another $1.5 million needed for maintenance; and 3) taxes will, in fact, go up as projected valuations increase. So: did you read the proposition and you dislike it? Or do you dislike that I made it available so people could think for themselves?

  18. Charles Smith – no contractor would bid with a warranty requirement like that. If they did there would be so many contingencies and exceptions as to make the contractor blameless.

    AVL- I realize you are super proud of your math skills. The issue is that failed roads receive a different treatment than poor. Which means that the total number of roads that can be treated by the bond is less than the 70% of poor/failed. Compare that number versus the 560 miles and you will find that a good portion of the failed roads will be fixed (plus you will reduce the number of poor/failed roads overall-that’s how math works). The reason you will need another bond is to pave all the roads that failed while you were paving the currently failed roads. Regardless of where the money comes from, you cannot fix everything all at once.

    Libertarian – ask yourself why we have a republic and not a true democracy and that is the same reason you don’t let the people decide what roads get fixed. Hopefully an objective method will be used and there will be a minimum of political direction-because that is the whole problem.

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