A few weeks back, the Weekly
went into some depth about why we supported all seven bond questions and the city’s proposed charter changes, but opposed the removal of the red-light cameras and speed vans and didn’t approve of raising the pay for the Tucson mayor and city council.
As Election Day rolls around next Tuesday, Nov. 3, we thought we’d briefly recap our reasoning for those of you who haven’t yet voted and are looking for some quick guidance.
Pima County Bond Package: Hell Yes!
Pima County is asking voters to approve an $815 million bond package. We might not like every single project in the package, there are enough worthy projects that we can live with the other stuff.
Here’s the bottom line, as calculated by the county: If you live in a house that is at the county’s average value of roughly $152,000, your taxes will go up by less than $18 a year. That’s like $1.50 a month. In exchange, you’ll get better roads, better parks, historic preservation, more libraries, expanded open space, improved flood protection and a whole lot more. This strikes us as a reasonable deal.
Opponents of the bonds toss all kinds of numbers to scare taxpayers, but in most cases, those figures are inaccurate, out of context or nonsense. And then, after spewing their BS, they turn around and the say the county can’t be trusted.
If the bonds are such a terrible idea, why do they have support across the political spectrum from Tucson Metro Chamber, the Southern Arizona Leadership Council, the Tucson Business Alliance, the Tucson Association of Realtors, Visit Tucson, the Sun Corridor Inc., the Pima Area Labor Federation, the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association, the Tucson Historic Preservation Foundation, the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection, the Pima Library Foundation and dozens of other groups?
These props will help the county pave crumbling roads, create jobs, expand opportunities for big and small businesses, improve parks, libraries and health clinics, fix up museums and performing arts venues, save historic buildings, build a new sheriff’s department substation, conserve open-space preservation, do vital flood-control work and much more. The benefits are spread across the county and safeguards are built in to ensure that the promised work will be done.
These are solid projects and worthy of your vote next week.
City of Tucson
Prop 201: No
We don’t want to see cameras at every intersection or a van nabbing speeders on every street, but the program that the city of Tucson is using at eight high-traffic intersections has, by and large, been a success. Accidents have dropped by a staggering 70 percent at those crossroads and people drive more cautiously—as you would expect. We know many people fear the idea of robotic law enforcement, but given the number of lousy drivers we see on the streets whenever we’re driving around, we’re OK with some technological help to keep some of them in line—or at least bust them when they do something dumb like run a red light.
Prop 403 Equal Power for Mayor: Yes
This would give the mayor equal power to his fellow council members when it comes to firing high-ranking city officials and some other parliamentary authority. It’s well past time we do this.
Prop 404 Removing civil-service protections for department heads: Yes
Under the current rules, department heads at the city of Tucson enjoy too much job protection—and as a result, they know they don’t have to follow orders from the city manager because it’s almost impossible to get rid of them. While civil service protections are good for the rank-and-file, it’s just silly to give them to the people at the top.
Prop 405: Raises for mayor and council: No
No. Prop 405 would boost the City Council’s pay from $24,000 a year to $27,456 annually and the mayor’s salary from $42,000 to $48,360 annually. While the pay seems low for what is a full-time job, there are a lot of other perks that come with the gig, from a free car to an outstanding pension after you serve just five years. Given how much the city has already cut back in vital services, we think it would send the wrong message to pass along raises.
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2015.
Where is the evidence that the red light camera program has been a success? While accidents may have dropped by 70% (TPD was completely nontransparent with their methodology in crunching those numbers), the number of red light running citations issued at those intersections most certainly has NOT dropped 70%, which prompts this question: could the 70% drop be due to other factors?
The answer is yes, according this study: http://phototicketing.com/files/Tucson10_1…
(For those thinking, “The cameras save lives!”, page 30 is worth the read.)
Time to pull the plug on intentionally bad traffic engineering and an overall corruptly-run program. Yes on 201.
Vote NO on 404. Quite frankly, I amazed that the TW is endorsing this. It was pushed by the development lobby to be able to get Development Services directors out of the way of their plans. Civil service is designed to protect employees from political interference. If it passes you’ll have a director who can be fired for no reason by a City Manager who can be fired by 4 votes at any time for no reason. Its a power play by people who don’t even live in the city limits.
San Diego Mayor Bob Filner ended red light camera enforcement in February of 2013. “It just seemed to me that the hostility toward [the cameras] bred more disrespect for the law than respect for the law,” Filner said. He added, “Seems to me that such a program can only be justified if there are demonstrable facts that prove that they raise the safety awareness and decrease accidents in our city. The data, in fact, does not really prove it.”
We agree with Mayor Filner. Those who believe there is conclusive proof that the cameras are helping us in Tucson have not taken the time to thoroughly analyze research about them. The statistic that the Weekly has cited is in an uncontrolled study– the accident rate dropped throughout Tucson in that same period, almost certainly due to a drop in miles driven, (which was itself perhaps triggered by a combination of things). Also, the cameras seem to redirect traffic to other intersections, as drivers avoid them. If they truly worked to reduce poor driving, they would be a losing business proposition–people would change their behavior and the cameras would be out of a job very quickly. As it is, the cameras make plenty of profit for ATS, and those profits are not dropping.
Most of the “research” done is conducted or funded by the companies that own the cameras. Voters who take the time to read the research, follow the money, and add up the numbers on their own will be voting yes on proposition 201.