TRADE WINDS
We mentioned last week that downtown developers Scott
Stiteler and Don Martin, the owners of the Rialto block,
have been negotiating a sort of Monopoly trade with the city of Tucson
(“Let’s Make a Deal,” May 21).
Essentially, Martin and Stiteler are agreeing to develop some
downtown properties—the big one being the Rialto block—and
in return, the city will give them anywhere from $3.5 million to $7
million in downtown property. That could include, according to a draft
of the agreement, an old Volvo dealership on Broadway Boulevard east of
downtown, the downtown train depot, the Ronstadt Transit Center and a
property on Sixth and Toole avenues.
What’s not in the agreement is any security for the Rialto
Theatre, which is the one part of the Rialto Block that Stiteler and
Martin don’t own. It was purchased by city of Tucson with Rio Nuevo
funds and is now leased to the nonprofit Rialto Theatre Foundation.
The city bought the Rialto in 2004 with the hope that it would give
people a reason to come downtown. Under the stewardship of Rialto
Theatre Foundation executive director Doug Biggers, the Rialto
has done just that, as anyone who regularly attends the shows at the
historic venue can attest. (We should mention that Biggers co-founded
and published the Tucson Weekly until he sold it in 2000 and
gave your Skinny scribe this job.) Biggers—along with general
manager Curtis McCrary (an occasional TW contributor)—have turned the Rialto into Rio Nuevo’s biggest
success story so far.
One need only look at the recent disastrous Jay-Z concert at
the UA to see how easy it is to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars
in the concert business when you don’t know what you’re doing. Or down
Congress Street at the Fox, to see how the best of intentions can lead
to millions of dollars in debt.
While the city has secured the Rialto as a community asset, the
Rialto Foundation is using a building on Broadway owned by Martin and
Stiteler so that bands have a green room, and the Rialto staff has an
office. They’re also using some storage space in the Rialto building
that belongs to the developers. But details about allowing the Rialto
Foundation to continue using those spaces are absent from an early
draft of the development agreement that the Weekly obtained.
The foundation’s board of directors is trying to persuade the city
to acquire those spaces as part of the development agreement that gives
the aforementioned city property to Stiteler and Martin.
Michael Crawford, a former Tucson City Councilman and
president of the Rialto board, says the city should be looking out for
the theater’s continued operation as part of any development
agreement.
“From what we’ve seen about what’s coming down, the Rio Nuevo
District’s theater is not being protected,” Crawford says. “If you’re
going to give all kinds of incentives and such, you’ve got to do what
you can to protect the crown jewel of Rio Nuevo.”
FOR SALE: LOCK, STOCK AND BARREL
Senate President Bob Burns finally relented last week and let
the Senate Appropriations Committee advance a budget plan, even though
it doesn’t have enough support to pass the full Senate. Burns wants to
get the budget ball rolling, given that the Legislature only has one
more month to come up with a budget before the government would shut
down.
The Senate budget has many of the same problems found in the House
budget we’ve talked about in recent weeks. But it adds a new twist: It
outsources control of the state prisons to a private company in
exchange for a $200 million upfront payment.
Here’s the problem with privatizing prisons: You’re putting a profit
motive on keeping people behind bars, which skeeves us out.
Private prison management is bound to cut corners for the sake of
profit, particularly when it comes to rehabilitative services. Those
sorts of programs cost money—and if you really do rehabilitate
someone, you’ve lost a future customer.
The Democrats are scheduled to release a budget after our deadline
this week. Visit The Range, our daily dispatch at blog.tucsonweekly.com, as we unpack
the Democratic plan, which promises to balance the budget, protect
social programs and not raise taxes.
That trick has to involve the mother of all gimmicks.
SPECIAL MOMENTS
The Legislature swung into special session last week to save a
program that lets disabled and foster children attend private
schools.
The kids were attending the private schools through a voucher
program that was created a few years back as a way of testing whether
the Arizona Constitution allows public dollars to be spent on private
schools.
The Arizona Supreme Court ruled the program was unconstitutional
back in March.
To let the kids now in the program keep going to the private schools
where they’ve grown comfortable, Republicans decided to create an
alternative tax-credit program, since that would pass constitutional
muster.
In their urgency—nearly two months after the ruling—the
GOP caucus jumped into a special session last Thursday, May 21. Or at
least they tried to.
Democratic senators, who oppose the program, took a walk, and
several Republicans had already left for vacation, including the
Majority Whip Pamela Gorman, so there weren’t enough lawmakers
around to form the legally required quorum.
Hey, isn’t it Pamela’s job to make sure there are enough votes to
get the job done? WTF, Pamela—we know the Indy 500 is fun and
all, but don’t you have a job to do?
Sen. Jonathan Paton was dragged back from the airport, where
he was supposed to catch a flight to San Diego to attend a legislative
conference. Sucks to be him.
Republicans are complaining that Democrats and their allies in the
teachers’ unions must hate children since they don’t support this
program. That’s a tough complaint to swallow, given the way Republicans
have been hacking away at funding for foster care and disabled kids all
year long.
Let’s face it: Republicans used the kids as a way to get voucher
programs underway. They created the false hope for the parents in the
first place, just so they could have a sympathetic face for the public
funding of private schools.
If you’re serious about helping kids who need extra attention, maybe
you should start by not cutting back on public schools in the first
place.
HARD LUCK
It appears that the notion of laying a special tax on Tucson’s strip
clubs is petering out.
Ward 6 City Councilwoman Nina Trasoff suggested this money
shot as a way of helping Tucson boost its sagging revenue stream.
But City Attorney Mike Rankin, citing a seminal federal court
ruling in Texas, said that a tax on cover charges for adult
establishments would probably be unconstitutional.
A broader entertainment tax on all performances—from symphony
halls to movie theaters—might be possible, but Rankin advised
against it. He noted that those businesses already pay a 2 percent city
sales tax on their revenues, and the city charter blocks the council
from imposing an additional tax on them.
Although the city could eliminate its sales tax on those operations
and create a new, higher “occupational license tax,” it would lead to
accounting problems for those businesses, since they would still have
to pay the normal sales tax on anything else they sell on their
premises.
Find early and late-breaking Skinny at our new daily dispatch,
The Range, at blog.tucsonweekly.com.
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2009.
