Pima County Taxpayers To Be Asked To Pass Another Bond

During Tuesday’s Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting, a proposal to trim excessive overhead by Supervisors Ally Miller was rejected in a 3-2 vote. Instead, supervisors Sharon Bronson, Richard Elias, Steve Christy, and Ramon Valadez moved to put a bond proposal on the July 3 Board of Supervisors’ meeting agenda.

Christy made the motion to put the bond proposal on the July 3 agenda, which will most likely be approved, and will place the bond measure on the November General Election ballot.

The decision to go forward with an expensive bond election rather than look at the existing bloat in the budget surprised residents who rejected a bond proposal two years ago.

Miller’s proposal included cuts to the Communications Department while ensuring that the deputies received their “Step” increase.

Miller opposed the tax scheme proposed by County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry which would have essentially shifted the cost for repairing roads from landowners and renters to the working poor through an increase in sales tax.

The board’s debt service vote was 5-0.

The board also approved the budgets for the Stadium District, which pays for the operation and maintenance of Kino Sports Complex, and it approved the budgets for about two dozen improvement districts and the Rocking K South Community Facilities District.

In one of the most notable moments of the meeting, Miller pointed out that Huckelberry has proposed spending $11 million on new soccer fields rather than repair the roads. Huckelberry claimed the monies for the fields are restricted, but Miller corrected the record and noted that the fields are going to be paid for by Certificates of Participation through the general fund. Those monies are not restricted by anything other than Huckelberry’s schemes.

Miller’s proposal:

The goal of these recommendations is to focus efforts on funding core services and making road repairs the number 1 priority for Pima County. It is time to reduce expenditures and to reprioritize spending in Pima County. Following is a summary of the adjustments made to the County Administrator Budget Recommendations as of Friday, June 15, 2018.

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Reductions were made to various departmental general fund expenditures up to a 10 percent maximum reduction for each department with the exception of the Communications Department and Kino Stadium District. To accomplish this reduction in operations budgets I am recommending an immediate hiring freeze in all departments.

The Communications Department budget has been reduced by 50%. Pima County should be outsourcing printing projects and the budget has continued to climb each year. A proposed budget of $1,130,237 is to be utilized for all county communications needs.

The Kino Stadium district general fund expenses were reduced by $42,415.70, in addition to the Kino Sports Complex capital projects of $10,959,514 being reduced to 0. I am recommending we postpone soccer and sports complex improvements while we focus on our most crucial need in the community at this time: Our disastrous roads.

Several departments were not reduced including the Elections department and the County Recorder department due to upcoming elections. Parks & Recreation Department was not reduced since it is one of the core services the County provides.

The total of all reductions was $31,407,393.07.

Of this reduction, I have allocated $2,000,000 to the Sheriff Department to meet the Pima County Deputy Association request of an additional $1.8 million to meet the goals of the step program. This will improve morale and end potential litigation on this matter.

The balance of $29,407,393.07 is allocated to the Transportation Department for road repairs. Along with these monies I have reduced the operations Budget of the Transportation department by 20% ($8,689,690.80) and moved these monies to fund road repairs. This will add an additional $38,097,083.87 for road repairs in this fiscal year.

Moving forward, it is critical that all departments be given efficiency improvement goals. We will not improve until we set efficiency goals and hold department managers accountable to these goals.

Finding ways to do more with less is how the private sector must operate and it is past time that we operate our government in the same manner. We must fund road improvements and reduce our property taxes in Pima County to make our economy thrive. While it may be a difficult transition, we all know change will not happen until we make it happen.

I am recommending that we do not increase our rates from 2017/2018.

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