March 8 Memo from Pima County Administrator Charles H. Huckelberry to the Board of Supervisors for contract award votes on their March 20 agenda:
The County has been methodically making improvements to the Historic Courthouse over the last year or longer. The project has progressed through a series of phases that were designed to transform the Historic Courthouse that housed primarily County staff into a vibrant centerpiece displaying the history and culture of Pima County.
Readers may remember that a $25 million bond proposal to renovate the building was voted down in the 2015 bond election. When Supervisor Ally Miller questioned continued spending on the structure while road repairs were shelved, the County Administrator did some creative math to bury the issue. In an October 31, 2017, memo to the BOS, he said:
Current funding for tenant improvements to the second and third floors, for build out of space for two County departments, and for the proposed Visitor Center portion of the first floor, total $18.5 million. Of this, $4.5 million was essentially 2004 voter-approved funding for the rehabilitation of the Old Courthouse; and $1.5 million comes from Visit Tucson for its share of tenant improvements to the second and third floors. Neither funding source could legally be spent on road repair. The remainder of the funding will come from the General Fund. (Emphasis in the original.)
Stripped of the verbiage, what Huckelberry said was that $6 million was legally earmarked for courthouse renovation. If true, that leaves $12.5 million to come from the General Fund that could have been used for road repair. The bond proposal adopted by the BOS for 2004 lumped the Old Courthouse with other court projects and assigned no fixed numbers to the renovation, which was to provide new offices for the BOS and County Administrator, restore a working courtroom, and establish a Western Art museum.
That $18.5 million is more than triple Huckelberry’s own 2004 estimate of the costs, $5 million, and almost double his 2013 estimate of $9 – 10 million. That history indicates that we can expect further upward revisions of what taxpayers will have to shell out.
Visit Tucson’s $1.5 million “share of tenant improvements” is, in fact, largely taxpayer money. Here’s their Mission Statement: Visit Tucson’s mission is to drive economic development by connecting visitors with their ideal travel & meetings experiences in Tucson and Southern Arizona. Visit Tucson is financially supported by the City of Tucson, Pima County, the Town of Oro Valley and more than 500 individual and business partners. (Emphasis added.)
Supervisor Sharon Bronson serves on their Board of Directors, along with Tucson City Council member Shirley Scott and Oro Valley Vice Mayor Lou Waters. Cronies from Sun Corridor Inc., Tucson Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Tucson Association of Realtors, and University of Arizona also sit on the Visit Tucson board.
No doubt the Supervisors will dutifully approve over $8 million in construction contracts on March 20. They will also likely approve leases – about which no financial information is provided to them in Huckelberry’s memo – with Visit Tucson and a University of Arizona Mineral Museum. All they, and we, are being told is:
Both will pay rent as outlined in the leases and the revenue is expected to cover all maintenance and operational costs relative to the areas they occupy. There are provisions in each lease to reconcile these costs and make rent adjustments to cover increased maintenance and operations costs.
Forget the numbers, just take his word. And they will.