The Rio Nuevo Board is fed up with Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik’s attitude. “Despite the working relationship of the City-District collaboration as a result of the Mediation, Councilman Kozachik continues to offer an angry, sarcastic and unwarranted assault on the District that is both counterproductive and ill-informed,” the Board wrote in their recent newsletter.
They reproached Kozachik for his misinforming the public and misrepresenting the District’s “intentions, negotiations, open meeting law issues, and agreements.” Councilman Kozachik came out last week attacking the Board due to their questions regarding sales tax revenues at a recent meeting of the Rio Nuevo Board.
At that meeting, Rio Nuevo Board members inquired as to why City sales tax revenues are up, but mysteriously Rio Nuevo revenue is down. There has been some speculation that the tax forms submitted to the State may be missing the code which would designate tax for Rio Nuevo because City staff no longer educates businesses to properly file the forms for Rio Nuevo. The City has always been responsible for educating the businesses in the District to ensure truthfulness and accuracy of these forms.
The Rio Nuevo Board discussed asking the City to look into the matter and stated it was too early to point a finger without more information. Kozachik was seemingly outraged by the Board’s intended line of inquiry.
In what has become a weekly rant Kozachik writes in his newsletter, “if they understood the statute by which their own existence is formed, they’d know that if TIF falls below their ability to pay debt service, the City has to pay the excess. Why would the City shave money off from the collections if we’d have to pay it in the end anyway?” Ignoring the fact that if the City bleeds off money from the District, the City has more money under its control for the City leader’s cronies’ projects. Oversight would vaporize.
“A further example of them not quite understanding the rules that govern the way they do business is that there was discussion of them having a “retreat” on June 14th.” Kozachik continues his assault on the Rio Nuevo Board’s writing that, “While that sounds cozy, the fact is that they’re prohibited from that by the Open Meetings Law. It’s the same law that is flaunted by excessive and poorly agendized executive sessions, and by the failure to put financial records up on their web site for over a year.”
In the state of Arizona, Governing Board of all types go on “retreats” and are bound by Open Meeting Laws. Open Meeting Laws do not prohibit retreats, nor do they require the posting of financial records by government bodies. Despite the fact that several organizations have fought for that provision, many governmental organizations, including the City of Tucson fail to share their financial information with the public on their websites.
The Rio Nuevo Board continues to question Kozachik’s resistance to transparency. They asked why Kozachik, who “ran on a platform of cleaning up the mess created by the then-City Mayor and Council,” now wants “to hinder uncovering the truth?” It has been and remains the City’s request to keep the mediation matters behind closed doors.
From 1999 until 2010 the District was controlled and managed by the City.
The tangled web of spending, debt, and project ownership is now in mediation and under investigation by the FBI. The Rio Nuevo Board contends that the “new City administration has an obligation to truly cooperate and work hand in hand with the District in uncovering the truth while continuing to work toward progress with the District. Huge amounts of taxpayer money have been spent and we all have a right to know what happened and collect our assets…while we move forward.”
Kozachik is especially angry that the Rio Nuevo Board sued the City. However, the Rio Nuevo Board contends that it was left no choice by the City. The Notice of Claim filed by the District was required to preserve the “District’s and taxpayers’ right to recover costs to repair the TCC.” Estimated unfunded upkeep costs for TCC, to date are approximately $40,000,000.
Visitors to the Tucson Community Center continued to ask what happened to the Ticket Tax money. Gun Show attendees noted the crumbling walls outside, and one visitor said, “They can get away with $8 parking fees because you pay those before you see how bad the place really is.”
Kozachik included his rant by attacking the public and staff, “And for those of my critics (and staff) who have accused me of spending too much time in front of the media, please consider that I might simply be working off some primordial urges that I’m stuck with.”
To which one member of City staff replied, “Yup, governing by primordial urge is exactly what we’ve got.”