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 Neighborhood-Based Environmentalists Flex Their Muscles In Oro Valley. By Emil Franzi THE PARADIGM HAS shifted in the growth wars. Whenever the voters in most local jurisdictions are presented with something even vaguely resembling a clear alternative, they're choosing to restrain growth and support candidates not considered part of the Growth Lobby's once-powerful machine.
This clear victory over the Growth Lobby is all the more impressive because the Oro Valley Coalition is not exactly a juggernaut of sophisticated political acumen. It has limited resources, and its members seem to think it's distasteful to ask for money for political campaigns. Both Loomis and LaSala were heavily outspent by their opponents in the primary and general elections. Development types spent more than $15,000 in the primary election on outgoing Councilman Bill Kautenberger's mayoral campaign. Kautenberger--besides being a boring stiff--was saddled with plenty of negatives, including a big hit from the Pima County Attorney's Office concerning the town's loose expense accounts. He ran third, behind Loomis and former Oro Valley Chamber of Commerce president Mike Cadden, whom Loomis subsequently beat in a run-off election. Cadden spent about $16,000 total for the primary and general elections; Loomis spent a total of $5,500--proving you can't just buy elections anymore, or at least that you'd better get smarter about how you spend the money. Cadden proved he had some class by not being the developer's choice on the first go-around. A genuine moderate on many issues, he ran a clean, decent, positive campaign, unlike some prior Oro Valley candidates. He never took a shot at some of Loomis' vulnerabilities. So he lost, making Loomis Oro Valley's first elected mayor. (Prior to this election, the mayor was chosen by the Town Council.)
The two new members will clearly bring a new attitude to what was formerly a "team" approach by the old council on a host of issues. They'll join defrocked former mayor Cheryl Skalsky, former interim mayor Dick Johnson, who knocked Skalsky from the top job a couple months ago, and Vice Mayor Paul Parisi. Skalsky, who beat Loomis two years ago, has become a wild card on numerous issues. One of those issue is annexation--specifically, Oro Valley's recent attempt to grab bleeding chunks of Tortolita and Casas Adobes to satisfy land speculators and developers. Neither Loomis nor LaSala are clearly anti-annexation, but both have publicly balked at the concept of pre-annexation agreements cut with builders to waive grading ordinances, among other environmental requirements. And both Loomis and LaSala want to stop the use of groundwater on the town's many golf courses, a move that may be legally difficult to accomplish. Loomis has one advantage called the gavel--he's the mayor and has the bully pulpit. But he and LaSala also lack a majority and, worse, are saddled with a staff which includes an aggressive town manager in Chuck Sweet, who has shown on numerous occasions that he has his own agenda. That agenda resembles the Growth Lobby's on many issues, from rezonings to annexation to waivers of the town's sometimes strict growth controls.
Oro Valley Coalition types have exhibited a certain naiveté over the years about how government really works--many even believe that projects like the City of Tucson's Civano "solar village" are on the level, and some are into the myth that the elected officials make policy, while bureaucrats like Sweet just implement it. In the meantime, the heartening part of this whole story is that the voters up in Caddy Shack would appear to have figured out the Growth Lobby's scams and rejected their candidates in favor of some genuine--if flawed--folks who might actually represent them for a change. Which is about a good a trend as we can find.
Who knows? This wave of basic common sense might even hit Marana
next time.
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Take the recent Oro Valley election: Newly-elected Mayor Paul
Loomis and City Councilman Fran LaSala are both products of the
Oro Valley Neighborhood Coalition, a group that has also produced
Democratic congressional candidate Wayne Bryant and Amphitheater
School Board member Nancy Young Wright. In many ways, they are
the Growth Lobby's worst nightmare.
LaSala beat incumbent Frank Butrico, who suffered from having
been appointed by the current gang, as well as a slight but unfortunate
resemblance to Mr. Magoo. In fact, LaSala beat Butrico twice,
but didn't get 50.1 percent in the primary, so he had to finish
him off in the general election. He did so by about the same margin--53
to 44 percent--that Loomis bagged Cadden. Another safe vote for
the Growth Lobby, Butrico outspent LaSala by at least 10 to 1.
It would seem that Oro Valley voters looked upon these two races
as a package deal.
How well Loomis and LaSala handle Sweet and other staffers will
determine their effectiveness.
