Going Insane in Tucson

I’m going insane, at least according to the following two definitions.

Insanity:

1. to keep expecting that the Tucson establishment will be honest someday about the causes of the metropolis’ problems;

2. to keep hoping that local media will speak truth to power instead of parroting the untruths of those who have been in power for decades in Tucson.

A new bout of insanity was triggered by a News 4 (KVOA) newscast and a written follow-up titled, “Searching 4 Solutions: from the need to road pavement repair to road preservation,” by Sarika Sood.

I got hooked into watching the newscast and reading the follow-up, because News 4 initially seemed as if it was going to finally get to the bottom of a problem.  The segment said that 70 percent of the city’s roadways are in poor or failed condition, that voters voted against a crosstown freeway long ago and will never support one, and that something has to be done about traffic.

Unfortunately, the segment then went on to chirp the party line instead of revealing how the city got into this mess, why normal preventative maintenance was deferred for decades, how monies from high sales taxes and a high property tax rate were squandered, and why residents have kept voting for the one-party government that caused the mess.

A city official was quoted about the additional half-cent sales tax increase for road repairs that citizens voted to stay in effect for ten years.  He said that this will result in the repair of all of the city’s streets, including arterial ones and residential ones.

Achieving nicely paved roads in ten years assumes that the life of newly paved roads will be extended through such normal maintenance as crack sealing and top-coating.  History shows that there is absolutely no reason to assume that preventative maintenance will take place.

Nothing was said about roads in the surrounding unincorporated county, a jurisdiction that accounts for a whopping 36 percent of the metropolis, including most of the Foothills, a relatively wealthy part of town compared to the high poverty in the City of Tucson.

Roads are just as bad in this 36 percent as they are in the City of Tucson, and there are even some dirt roads in the Foothills that look as if they were designed for stagecoaches.  Worse, there aren’t sidewalks alongside busy roads in front of several elementary schools and a major high school in the Foothills—roads known for speeding cars, due to a lack of speed enforcement by the sheriff.

The political party that has a monopoly in the city also has a monopoly in the county. Together, the city and the unincorporated county account for nearly 90 percent of metro Tucson’s population of nearly 1.1 million people.

Also left unsaid in the News 4 segment was anything about the embarrassment of the Regional Transportation Authority, an agency that is supposed to plan, coordinate and fund transportation improvements affecting the region, including the City of Tucson, Pima County, Oro Valley, Marana, and South Tucson.  It has been riven by in-fighting and funding problems.

Meanwhile, 100 miles up the interstate is the Maricopa Association of Governments, the regional planning authority for metro Phoenix.  It figured out a half-century ago how to get 28 municipalities, three Indian communities, and two counties to work effectively together.

Finally, the segment said nothing about the condition of landscaping along the shoulders and medians of roads.  Maybe News 4 subscribes to the piety that if you can’t say anything good about something, don’t say anything.

Seventy percent of roads are in poor are failed condition, and an equal percent have lousy landscaping.  Plantings are sparse or non-existent, litter and weeds abound, illegal and tacky advertising signs are ubiquitous, and because ground cover is largely nonexistent, bare dirt prevails.

Granted, being in the desert, Tucson can’t have the lush vegetation, green lawns and towering trees of New England.  But it can have attractive desert landscaping, or to use a fancy term, xeriscaping.  Medians and roadsides can be planted with a variety of native plants and cactus, the bare dirt can be covered with crushed granite and riprap and boulders, aesthetically-pleasing designs can be made of these plants and materials, and the final product can be raked periodically and otherwise kept in good condition.

There are cities that can be used as models of attractive landscaping, but as soon as their names are mentioned, provincial and hidebound members of the Tucson establishment exclaim in unison, “We can’t be like them,” or alternatively, “We don’t want to be like them.”  They say this because it would require the overthrow of the local establishment for Tucson’s roads to be as attractive.

At the same time, being unwilling to speak truth to power, the local media won’t run segments showing how Tucson roads and landscaping compare to these other cities and asking why there is such a difference.

I’ll do it for them.  Below and attached are six photos of mine that make the comparison.  The first is a photo of attractive desert landscaping in a city that will not be named.  The other five are of scenes in the Foothills.

Of course, only an insane person would make such comparisons.