Concurrent with last week’s general assessment of what lays ahead for Arizona, I will try to briefly examine how it may affect the City of Tucson, a.k.a. “the Dirty T.”
It seems safe to say that Tucson will get absolutely no help from the Phoenix elite, who’ll have their hands full, inasmuch as they have tens of billions $$$ more to lose; this is understandable.
The following bullet format is probably the best:
- Tucson Goes Full “Gateway City”: Sanctuary City be damned, we’re now Gateway City.Seeing more than 250,000+ illegal invaders/mo, so much the Governor of Texas on Nov. 16th officially invoked the “invasion clause” in the state constitution; I fully expect Woke-run, border-burgs like Tucson to take up the slack. The term ‘gateway drug’, can now transition to ‘gateway city’ for Cubans, Venezuelans, Africans, et al. Maybe ex-Tucson PD, and fired US Border Chief, Chris Magnus, can come back and become the City’s Resettlement Czar? Wouldn’t that be a big virtue signal to the American Left? I can hear the giddy Wokes & Wokettes at City Hall right now.
- Tucson’s Tourism-Retirement-Mecca Fantasy Implodes Faster: The retirement haven you paid big bucks to enjoy is becoming your worst nightmare. And your neighbors are too cheap & lazy to incorporate the 40%+ of Tucson’s Metro that’s still in feckless & corrupt Pima County. They’d rather get vandalized, robbed, shot, have their cars disintegrate on the crap roads, cleanup overnight homeless-scat, or simply live in urban squalor. This also includes NO cross-town freeway, because “Gasp! we’ll become another Phoenix!” (fat chance, Phoenix has 11). Meanwhile, Pima County becomes the last-resort employment leviathan with few incorporated Metro cities to claw-back all the money they’ve stolen & consumed.
- UA Transitions Faster to University of Northern Sonora: I don’t mean this in any racist way, and [certainly] aware Mexicans understand UA is a horrible example of how to manage a state flagship university, but I have to also warn the Mexicans. Now that UA’s on the prowl for more clueless freshmen (& their witless parents), your young people are fair game. Don’t take the bait, even if you do get in-state tuition. Graduate from a university somewhere you can get a real job nearby, because real employers have been recruited there by the university, a competitive city establishment, and other competent professionals. The examples abound.
- Kiss Any Sensible NEW Transportation Links Good-bye: Along with the lack of any cross-town freeway (in a 1.1 million Metro) …say adios to the ‘Sonoran Corridor’ and a commercial loop around the Metro’s southern half, linking East & North I-10 with I-19 to Nogales. Maybe the railroads will trigger some kind of positive response, inasmuch as they have legal muscle & trackage rights. And forget cleaning up all the central Tucson ticky-tacky storefronts with no parking, on decaying commercial streets everywhere—that miraculously stay in business, somehow feeding the City with their share of property taxes. Gee, can you say, “laundromat”?
In the last analysis, I’ve given up on Tucson’s so-called ‘elite’ to refloat this sinking urban houseboat. And basically for 3 reasons: #1. They simply don’t care, #2. They’re incompetent, and #3. (most importantly) They’ve run out of ‘talent feedstock’ from all who’ve already fled North. Tragic.
Sellers is a Southpark Republican living in incorporated Oro Valley; his background is federal technology commercialization.