After a 60-plus-people protest and a handful of screaming matches in the middle of El Rio Neighborhood Center, Barrio Hollywood residents decided last week that voting rights in its neighborhood association are now exclusive to people who live in the barrio. Meaning, if you’re a Barrio Hollywood business or property owner whose home is rooted elsewhere: you’re out of luck.
A group of business owners also supported changing voting rights to residents only (among them are El Rio Bakery and Mariscos Chihuahua). The vote ended up being 69 for changing voting rights to 13 no’s.
“Of course, we are going to keep businesses involved. We welcome business participation, what we don’t welcome is them coming in and changing the outcome of our elections,” says Scott Egan, proponent of the bylaw changes and a resident of Barrio Hollywood for 35 years. “You wanna vote in our elections, move into Barrio Hollywood!”
Still, business owners can attend meetings and voice their opinion.
Barrio Hollywood Neighborhood Association president Kacey Carleton, who supported for bylaws to include businesses’ voting rights, called the balloting that night “problematic.”
“Despite the effort which went into it, the voting process was again full of discrepancies,” she says in an email. “The count was overwhelmingly in favor of a Resident Only membership making any formal complaint of the process fruitless.”
During the neighborhood meeting, Carleton said excluding businesses in the process is a mistake Barrio Hollywood will regret in the long-run. A suggestion that was made is to have businesses create their own association like other neighborhoods, such as the Fourth Avenue Merchants Association.
Residents and businesses had previously voted on the issue on July 2, but those results were nullified.
Reportedly Carleton sent out an email last minute saying the session had been moved from 6 to 5:30 p.m., so a lot of stakeholders showed up late, and some were told they couldn’t vote anymore because it was past the time, according to meeting attendees. “Kacey invited businesses to come and vote before the meeting started, and then they just left,” Egan says. Carleton says that wasn’t the case.
Those who did make it to the July 2 meeting on time say they were told the vote was limited to one per household, no matter how many people lived there. Also, the city of Tucson’s Office of Integrated Planning had threatened to de-register Barrio’s neighborhood association if they decided to exclude businesses, which scared off a lot of residents from the process. However, before last week’s meeting, the city clarified that as long as businesses are able to weigh in on what happens in the neighborhood, even without voting rights, it means Barrio Hollywood’s bylaws are still inclusive and not up for penalties.
Talks to amend the west side neighborhood’s bylaws began more than a year ago. Back then, former president of the neighborhood association, Margaret McKenna, had just been voted out of that position after 25 years, and replaced by Carleton, someone many residents saw as a complete barrio outsider.
Up until last Thursday, this is how the Barrio Hollywood bylaws worked: one business gets one vote; each resident gets one vote. In the neighborhood election last year, many people claim that certain businesses (residents mentioned Pat’s Chili Dogs and Unique Trends hair salon) brought their employees to the meeting to help elect Carleton.
Diane Hernandez, wife of Pat’s Chili Dogs owner Charlie Hernandez—who grew up in Barrio Hollywood but later moved out—says they felt their voices weren’t being heard. Ever since the restaurant recently decided to take a back-seat in Barrio Hollywood’s Fiesta Grande—an annual celebration with food, art and music—their relationship went downhill.
“(Margaret) also complained because we wanted transparency,” Hernandez says. “If you are doing something good for the barrio, be transparent, say where the money is going. She didn’t want that. We voiced our opinion and that is where the animosity started.”
As owners of a business and another property in Barrio Hollywood, the Hernandez family got two votes and helped vote out McKenna.
“They exploited and stole the election from us,” says Patrick McKenna, Margaret’s nephew, and a fifth-generation Barrio Hollywood resident who worked with Pima County Supervisor Ray Carroll for more than one decade. “Jim Click owns businesses all over town, does he get to vote in every neighborhood association?”
McKenna envisions Carleton as a pawn of City Councilwoman Regina Romero—whose ward includes Barrio Hollywood and other west side neighborhoods—to green light gentrification, and to retaliate against the people for putting their foot down when Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild and Romero hoped a few years ago to sell El Rio Golf Course—a place of great historical and cultural value in the barrio—to Grand Canyon University, a private, Christian institution.
“When (Carleton) won, Ward 1 sends an employee to say ‘Congratulations Barrio, you elected a new president and we are here for you.’ I was shocked. I said ‘Shame on you guys,'” McKenna says. “Our City Council representative, she is supporting these people. I knew these local politicos since I was a little kid, I’m not surprised.”
Romero told the Tucson Weekly that she has never chosen one side or the other. “I haven’t fermented anything,” she says. “I said ‘look, make your decisions, these are the facts, these are the resources available for you, it is up to you to hopefully find a consensus.'”
A few days ago, McKenna got a visit from a Department of Public Safety officer, who McKenna says claimed he was doing Pat’s Chili Dogs a favor, and told McKenna to stop harassing the Hernandez family. McKenna and Charlie Hernandez grew up together, and their parents and grandparents, up until now, have been friends.
Although no boycott has officially been announced, some residents say they will never eat there again.
“Is this what the residents of Hollywood are going to have to face now because we voted the businesses out?” McKenna says. “People come to this barrio or stay in the barrio because of the sense of community, we have a sense of togetherness, investing in our families, our future. We want the ability to determine what happens in our own neighborhood.”
This article appears in Jul 23-29, 2015.
This is so sad to see the people of a once tight knit community so divided. Romero unfortunately does seem to have a hand in it.
This is the best reporting so far on what really went down in Barrio Hollywood. Maybe that is because this Tucson Weekly reporter actually bothered to attend the meeting and interview the people there? Well done, Maria! Kudos!
And, remember: the vast majority of residents present at this meeting voted in favor of this new proposal (69 to 10). This fact is obvious form this piece. Not so obvious – in fact misleading – in the AZ Star & KGUN 9 reports. Thanks again, Maria & Tucson Weekly crew!
There is nothing “sad” about participatory democracy, there is no serious division when you get a 69-10 vote in favor of resident rule, and there are two seperate organizations: Barrio Hollywood Neighborhood Association and Fiesta Grande. As a follow up, how about the Weekly asking DPS what authority they had to harass Patrick McKenna just because Charlie asked them to? Why was TPD not called (were they not eating at Pat’s at the time?). All non-residents of Hollywood are welcome to our meetings: businesses, absentee landlords, associations, etc., you just can’t determine who represents us any more.
a good Read… WOW ! about time someone got it Right … Thank you Tucson Weekley… we are Barrio Hollywood….
As owners of a business and another property in Barrio Hollywood, the Hernandez family got two votes…
So here a corporation is a person times 2? I thought they opposed businesses getting a vote. Why give them two, you can see exacttly what’s going to happen.
I am sure that Romero and her neighborhood benefit from support of the people outside of their district to keep her in office, so what’s good for that isn’t good for the other?
Also, if I had a business in that area and now couldn’t give a vote, maybe it’s time to close that location and move elsewhere.
This is exactly what happens when citizens do not trust their politicians. Each individual neighborhood is try to wrestle the power away from centralized government.
As a former board member of an HOA, and resident, the residents have spoken with their votes.
Just because you don’t have a vote (My association allowed only 1 voter per person who owned a unit – so if two people’s name were on a mortgage – that unit was entitled to 2 votes – but only for each person). doesn’t not mean that you can’t be involved and show up to meetings and be a part of the community.
Any community would be foolish to exclude their neighborhood businesses. Any business would be foolish to to participate in the association even if they are not afforded a vote.
I am still not sure why this is a big deal, but I hope this decision works in the favor of the actual residents and prevents any potential nefarious events.
This is probably one of my angriest pieces. But when the people we love are attacked, what are you gonna do, ya know? http://www.locallyownedaz.com/?p=316
Based on the landslide vote total it seems like the residents were already able to exercise control over the association as soon as they got organized. The residents already have the means to control the association. I’m not sure I understand how cutting out the non-resident business owner vote is anything more than plain old revenge for the previous election covered up by playing on residents’ fears of gentrification and losing neighborhood identity.
Nice try, “Viernes”.
Neighborhood residents having control of their own Neighborhood Association is not a radical or even a new idea. Thank you to the Tucson Weekly for actually sending a reporter to witness the events she was writing about. The Weekly was the only print media to do so.
Good article! Fighting to reduce the power of neighborhood residents is stupid from the onset. If you win and gain a majority interest, for instance, you would only serve to alienate and reduce or eliminate the role of the resident. Now you don’t have a neighborhood association any more. They didn’t think this one through.
Actually it was mob rule, a crowd stirred up by tall tales about outsiders voting in new officers. Let’s read this different. Former association members were voted out of office because others felt new blood was needed to revitalize the association. But the former officers feel that they are entitled to run the association and nobody else. So they poisoned the pot and made it impossible for the newly elected people to have a functional association.
Current officers have already stated that they will probably be voted out of office early. And then the association will once again be the private toy of the McKennas and Scott Egan and Mr. Fiesta Grande Nothing like always bringing up El Rio golf course and the need to find supposed enemies of Barrio Hollywood, always the same dirge and litany of stories that goes back to the sixties. And that’s becoming a scratchy tired old record on the Jukebox.
But things will not be the same. Those business owners who were insulted at this meeting will not forget. The people seeing the video of the meeting will not forget. So whatever political power the neighborhood association has will turn out to be the hot air of agitators. Nothing like setting your own house on fire and then trying to blame those nasty neighbors down the street.
When neighborhood residents organize themselves to take back their neighborhood association from outside agitators, it is not called mob rule, it is democracy in action.
Mr. Reality Check, you need a reality check.