I’m going insane, at least according to the following two definitions.
Insanity:
- to keep expecting that the Tucson establishment will be honest someday about the causes of the metropolis’ problems;
- 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.
Scenes on streets in the Foothills of Tucson include a dirt pile the size of a house left for years along a
busy road in the Foothills in a neighborhood of expensive homes, and sign clutter.
I fail to see how throwing oil on a road is tantamount to repair. All it does is gum up your car and very shortly afterwards your road is crap again. Build back better?
they oiled my street – put in 3 speed bumps – a round about – and with a closed school and the highest drug and crime rate in the city… they’re desperate to get some votes. Remembering 22nd street as a 2 lane road with out a bridge a the railroad.. it can be worse – but not much. The’Baranza’ expressway – or whatever it’s called now – interesting way to get from nowhere to nowhere – wow! oh wait its from ‘this tattoo shop, to that tattoo shop.. with a 1000 taco stands on the way
Think initially way back when that was going to be across town connection to I10 for people in city to get to one spot of that quicker and then they built up to one spot and Said eh forget about it. the amount of growth that this county could have would Rival Maricopa county, Except Traffic planning sucks like someone making stagecoach Trails.
Tucson Is the Vortex of Purgatory. I came her 20 years ago, naive. I lost my Relationship, Dog,Health, Money, Job and now I can never leave. Tell everyone you know.. Do NOT EVER come here. STAY AWAY!!!
Continuing to conflate the Foothills as a part of Tucson when they’re Unincorporated Pima County is only one of Cantoni’s ignorant points.
1) If you live on a crater-filled dirt road, it’s because YOU are responsible for maintaining that crater-filled dirt road. Otherwise, call the County as they generally grade on a 6-week cycle.
2) If there is a pile of dirt at a location and it’s causing an issue, call the jurisdiction to ask them why it’s still sitting around. The pile in that picture has SWPP around it, which means it’s probably for an emergency situation. Get rid of it and the next OP-ED will be Cantoni complaining about why his neighbor got flooded because someone took out the dirt pile berm that was protecting his neighbor’s poorly designed lot-which must obviously be the County’s fault as well.
3) There’s an HOA that had an agreement to take care of the landscaping in the main road. They stopped paying for water and maintenance. The plants died. The County removed the plants. Landscaping in the median is a cost. Eliminate that cost, now you can pave some roads.
4) If you move somewhere that is rural (no sidewalks and curbs) then the understanding is that the landscaping is natural desert, which sometimes looks bad-especially when there’s no rain. Contrast with tons of rain and then the complaints are about the overgrowth in the NATURAL DESERT. But sure, it must be a problem with not liking the natural environment…which isn’t a problem in the well-landscaped picture, God and Jesus did a great job with that natural selection of rock and cactus.
5) Suffice to say, Cantoni always has something to complain about. There may be easy answers, but it’s much easier to complain than to find the reasons why.
Maybe you dont’t get the fact those people up there ALREADY PAY ELEVATED PIMACO PROPERTY TAXES AND GET CRAP SERVICES….JUST CRAP….FOR THE MONEY THEY PAY OUT. Ditto the main arterial roads, and let’s not forget PUBLIC SAFETY…. PimaCo’s version of the Desert Keystone Kops, the PCSD. It’s what the Grijalva Gang has reduced Tucson’s 1.1M pop. Metro (~40% UN-incorp’d) to: a chicken tax farm of their “pluckees.” Mr. Cantoni is the tip of the spear.
Withous some kind of serious [exogenous] intervention, Tucson is circling the outer layer of a doom loop, heading straight towards its event horizon. With this as Mr. Cantoni details, and its DAILY HORRIFIC STREET CRIME, it’s only a matter of time before the bigger employers still left, piss on the campfire and leave.
couple years back it seemed city was going from neighborhood to neighborhood repaving side streets
then before they got to ours – it halted
now we’re like 29th from craycroft to wilmot – rumble road
Yeah I live out in the Irvington/Kilb area and they did my street though it would have lasted a few more years but Irvington is getting worse and needs to be widened to two lanes in each direction. Same for Pantano from Irvington to Seedway
hey ‘WE HAVE A TROLLEY” that can’t turn… goes from the penis emporium to the public housing – 00 MILLION DOLLARS – few use it -comes with a repair cost and ‘retirement fee’s’ for the drivers and maintenance crews – hospital to the bar – the tattoo shop – to the public housing – what more could you ask for?
We have the government, and all that it represents, that we deserve.
Sad but ya get what ya vote for
While I applaud the author’s continued efforts to shed some light on the continuing disaster of the local city and county Government, I have been in Tucson since 1959 and have NEVER seen anything different than what he has written. I will give the local news media one break…in the distant past they used to report news and held some people accountable but not anymore. They are bought and paid for by the Grijalva machine et al. Additionally, except for the wimp on AM radio at noon, maybe the citizens of Tucson and Pima Co can finally pay attention to what they have been preaching for the last multiple years!
Quit electing the same idiots (puppets to the power brokers) into office and maybe, just maybe, you might find some sanity and rational decisions brought to the forefront and finally change the backwards stagnant direction of Tucson.