Chart a Course for Tucson

I was asked by Vice Mayor Glassman to speak at the City Council study session about the changes that need to be made to make Tucson a business friendly city. The problem is that Tucson has grown without a plan or a vision. Our growth has occurred in spite of those opposing any growth. Because of that we have grown to our detriment. I told the council today that we need to:

1. Chart a course – that means having a vision for what we want to be and the kind of businesses we should be attracting to Tucson.
2. Change the code – our land development codes were called “Byzantine” and impossible to understand by the Clarion consulting group hired by the city. This report came out in 2008 and we have yet to cut the 1500 pages of code down to a reasonable 500 pages. The staff would then have a clear guideline on what is approved and council members would not need to interfere with the process.
3. Change the culture – when business people or land owners bring plans to developmental services they should be treated as a customer who is bringing revenue in to the city.

We are well behind other communities like Salt Lake City, Albuquerque and even El Paso in making these changes. I am glad that we have nearly 200,000 people that live in Tucson during the winter, but what does that really do for the economy? We need to attract people to Tucson that are bringing with them a company that will employ our kids and grandkids. When I talked about these ideas I could see that the council members want to do something, they just didn’t know what to do. In a tough economy those that make the necessary changes will survive and thrive. This is as true for cities as it is for business. Councilwoman Romero brought up the importance of education and the need to focus on it. I agree that it is important. We have a world class university in Tucson and a great community college. I think that our education system in Tucson from grade school to college is better than our competition. I don’t believe that is our problem, our problem is that as long as the revenues were coming in business people were ignored or worse demeaned. We have an opportunity to have some real change that we can believe in if we all take action now. The council has asked Ernie Duarte to work with the consultant (Clarion) to make the changes in the code that will make us competitive and streamline the process. They also were asking for a top to bottom assessment of city employees and to make the changes in the customer service culture in government. I didn’t hear anyone talk about creating a vision, this is something we need to encourage. All of us have a stake in what happens in our city. Unless we make the change now we will continue to see a decaying community. We will be known as the Detroit of the Desert instead of a shining city surrounded by hills.