On Tuesday, Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller sent a request to County administrator Chuck Huckelberry asking him to rethink his priorities. The move came after months of Miller hearing from residents about crumbling roads.
Miller spent Saturday meeting with 65 residents, who according to Miller, “have been living in hazardous conditions for years and they are fed up with soccer fields, open space and tech parks being a higher priority than their neighborhoods.”
In her letter, Miller reminded Huckelberry that under his “leadership as County Administrator over the past 20 years” the County has “acquired an almost $300 million dollar road problem.”
“While you continue to claim the crumbling roads are the result of residents not paying enough in gas taxes, Pima County tax payers are very much aware of how you have prioritized spending over the past 2 decades,” wrote Miller.
Miller, District 1’s supervisor, asked Huckelberry to give “serious attention to deal with the problem that has developed under your tenure. With the upcoming budget hearings, you can be certain I will be looking for the full HURF allocation, (less bond repayments), to be used on our roads in Fiscal Year 2015/16.”
According to Miller, under Huckelberry’s 20 years as County Administrator, he has “repeatedly chosen to allocate funds to other projects and disregard basic infrastructure maintenance – a core service of County Government. For years, your excuse behind the failed roads has always been to redirect blame somewhere else: the State Legislature, unfair HURF formulas, a need for a new tax and to increase taxes. While other counties and jurisdictions have been able to adjust and re-prioritize to maintain infrastructure, their roads are not in failing condition.”
Miller pointed out that the “citizens in the Orangewood North Neighborhood have clearly documented roads that are a safety hazard and due to a lack of maintenance and repair by the County, are now in dire need of being repaved before someone is seriously injured or killed.” Miller continued, “Please allocate funds to repair these roads and address the serious safety concerns residents face every day when driving their neighborhood roads.”