City Council - Regular Meeting

ready. Well, good afternoon everyone. Uh this is Monday, February 23rd. Uh we are having a mayor and council retreat. This is going to be mostly a conversation and laying out uh the mayor and council's priorities for 2627. I want to thank you all for making time to have this. I know that you're all have busy schedules. Wanted to thank the city manager and the assistant city managers for um for helping us put it together. Mandal, the chief of staff to the city manager for helping us with the logistics and of course our interim clerk Yolanda um Losano and the entire team for for helping us. We also welcome our new city clerk uh clerk is with us today. I called her this morning just to let her know how cool to start the day having a conversation about priorities with the mayor and council and seeing us in a much more relaxed environment. So, uh, welcome. We're really happy to have you here. So, um, it's not the first time that we have had mayor and council retreats. As a matter of fact, back in 2020, we had one. I believe we had another one in 22. Uh but it is the first mayor and council retreat for our new council colleagues, council member Vahas and uh Schubert. And uh this is I just want to extend a special thank you and welcome. This is an opportunity for us to have a really good conversation about priorities uh to understand what uh we need of each other and even though um we all represent the entire city of Tucson and all of our residents, it's

important to bring to the table the priorities that um residents in each and every ward have. And so I am really happy about it. gonna start out, but first we need to do do um call us into session and then do roll call. So, council will stand in session and let's go to roll call. Um council member Cunningham here, council member Dah here, council member Lee here, council member Barahas here, council member Schubert here, Vice Mayor Santa here, and Mayor Romero here. Mr. attorney, do you have any announcements?

Um, just briefly, uh, your honor, thank you. Um, just for clarity, so that because I know we have new council members that are have not been on one of these retreats before, um, we want to be careful. This is an opportunity for you to lay out your agenda, what you believe you are interested in doing over the next few years, um, and set your priorities. Um, it's not a we don't take legal action at this particular time, um, but that can be said on the later agenda. So, no official action. Correct. All righty. Anything else? Item two. Open your remarks by Mayor Middle.

Okay. Yolanda, if you insist. So, like I said before, today is an opportunity to share um with each other our priorities, bring them to the table, work with each other. Uh it's an opportunity also to think ahead opportunity to talk uh think about our budget and our budget priorities. We are entering budgeting season and so it's important that we center our priorities based on the immediate work ahead in terms of the budget. I want to mention a few successes because usually, you know, we we hear um when people need something, when they're in crisis, when they want to report something that's not working, but it's always good to tap into the amazing work that mayor and council have done and the successes uh that we've done as a team, as a mayor and council, but also as our city attorney and all of the city of Tucson workers. We passed our middle housing ordinance citywide. Uh we agree that housing needs to be affordable for Tonins and uh we did that. We passed our housing and homeless emergency. We opened uh just in January our safer center with in partnership with Puma County with opioid settlement funds to provide treatment and recovery services that have been lacking. Um all of us have talked at one time or the other that recovery and treatment is better than uh incarceration and enforcement only tactics. We continue our safe city

initiative. We um created and have been expanding the safe city deployments uh that provide services and uh innovative ways to be able to offer alternatives to jail services. Also, accountability needs to go handinand with our safe city deployments. Um, our city will be evolving. This is what I love about the city of Tucson, about my colleagues on the council, our city manager and his entire team and our department directors. We really think creatively and innovatively. We're flexible. We learn and then we continue moving forward. And that's something that I really appreciate in our team and all of us. Um what I wanted to talk about as well was affordable housing. Uh we continued working on climate change. Uh really offering a lot of investment and time into heat resiliency. Um, for me it's important that we continue this work uh that we continue uh on all of the innovative policy priorities and the policies that we've passed in my time as mayor the last six years. uh we've been able to learn from those from housing first to our housing affordability strategy for Tucson uh to the work that we're doing for working families um and the services that we provide. Kidco is a program that is near and dear to my heart and I know that uh Council Member Cunningham is also um a fan of KIDCO. We want to make sure that we not only continue it but expand it and be creative with it. Uh I think that retreats are a time to be uh

creative, innovative and I think they're productive because we largely um can like focus on uh what are the outcomes based on the priorities that we have. want to take a moment to thank everyone watching this meeting over YouTube. Uh that's important for all of us to be able to have witness and and public participation through uh through a live stream. And so I want to make sure that I that we thank them them whomever is watching. Um I hope we also remember that our work over the past few years has gotten us results uh putting our heat action roadmap into action and to work. We've seen tangibly seen uh less heat related hospitalizations and deaths in our city. Our community safety and response center has led to better response times and better collaboration between first responders. Our small business center opened. We have a place for small businesses in the city of Tucson um to come together and use a space that's friendly to them. Uh it's we've we've done a lot of work but as always we have a lot of work left to be done and I think that's uh exactly why we're here today. I want you all to feel comfortable and um please share with all of us. So with that we move on to item three priority setting remarks from each council member.

Thank you Yolanda. We're going to start with W six. We're going to start with the newbies. We're all all very curious now that not that we didn't hear what you were saying throughout the campaign, but um we usually start with Wr. So, we're going to start the other way around. We're going to start with W six and then five and then move down the the the the lane and finish with lane.

All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, Madame Mayor, members of the council, colleagues. As we enter this priority setting retreat, I want to begin with a grounding principle. Our goals must be bold, but they must also be achievable within our existing budget constraints. We do not have the luxury of unlimited new revenue, and I am painfully aware that the legislature is currently working to limit our options in the future. What we do have is the power to align our current spending policies and partnerships around a clear set of values. Housing justice, climate responsibility, and affordability. If we're disciplined about aligning the dollars that we already spend with the outcomes we say we want, we can make measurable progress in 2026 and 2027 without overpromising or destabilizing our finances. Okay. So my top three priorities are one protecting and expanding affordability, advancing housing justice through large-scale investment in permanently permanently affordable and social housing and that includes fair free transit. Number two, just a just and fossil-free economy. Accelerating Tucson's transition to a just fossil-free economy centered on good jobs, community ownership, safe mobility options for everyone. Um we want to focus on policies like middle housing that um focus on infill instead of sprawl and ensuring that we're protecting our water. Um so the large water user ordinance um it's important to me that it's not just a rubber stamp um but that it carefully asks questions um you know as to whether a large water user is going to negatively affect our long-term viability. And then three, reframing safety. I'm really interested in um looking at how we can truly increase safety across our communities. Um it's not solely tied to

the criminal legal system. Um so I see it as as multi-layered as investing in transportation safety, heat mitigation, social cohesion, mental and physical health, and um and investing in prevention because that creates long-term safety that invests in community and prevents the development of criminal behaviors. Um, traffic accidents are the largest cause of preventable deaths. Um, and these three things are not separate silos. They're mutually reinforcing. Housing stability reduces strain on emergency services, um, climate investments, um, lower long-term operating costs. But of course, we are facing a pretty stark reality. Um, we face deep income inequality, housing affordability crisis, climate driven water and heat risks, and overdue maintenance liability of transportation network. At the same time, we face structural budget pressures. We can't fund every good idea. Um, so I see our charge this year is to not look to expand um, but to prioritize, sequence, and leverage. Um, and that means using city-owned assets strategically and aligning our capital planning with climate and equity goals. Um, so then just a few areas of focus. Um, within current current fiscal constraints, two priorities stand out. First, rapid decarbonization of municipal operations. Um, our climate resiliency plan. Uh, Tucson Resilient together has given us an excellent roadmap to kick these efforts off. Um, so to me that means accelerating building electrification, looking at rooftop solar on city facilities, um, and aggressive energy efficiency retrofits, especially in facilities serving low-income neighborhoods. Um, and I know this is something council member Dah, I've definitely heard you talk about wanting to increase access to um to this type of resiliency in in

neighborhoods across the city. Um, these investments reduce our long-term utility costs. So, they are fiscally responsible. This isn't just about caring about the environment and being crunchy. This is about being practical. Um, they also position us to capture future funding and utility incentives. And then the second thing is long-term water resilience. We must strengthen conservation, protect our groundwater, limit unsustainable development patterns, and expand green storm water infrastructure that cools neighborhoods and recharges aquafers. Um it's so visionary um that Mayor Romero and the city council uh created the green storm water infrastructure project and I just want to see that um across more of the city. Um green infrastructure is more cost-effective over time. It reduces flooding, mitigates heat, and supports public health. And I just feel like I have way more notes than I'm going to have time for, so I'm going to just kind of try to skip through. Um, okay. Under transportation and infrastructure, transportation is a climate, economic justice, community safety, and a public health issue. It's also a leading cause of preventable death for young people. The statistics are really clear on this. Within our budget reality, we should prioritize protecting and strengthening frequent and reliable public transit service with workforce stability at the center and incrementally building a city-wide network of protected bike lanes, shaded sidewalks, and traffic calming. Um, every neighborhood that we have connected with at W 6 wants traffic calming in their neighborhood. It's very popular because people see it as an effective way of increasing safety. Um, traffic calming with prioritizing corridors with the highest rates of traffic injuries and lowest vehicle access. Safer streets reduce crashes and emergency response costs. Reliable transit connects people to jobs. These are investments that produce downstream savings and economic mobility. We can't build everything at once, but we can focus our capital dollars on corridors that deliver the highest safety and equity returns first, which

is why it's great that we had the motion from Vice Mayor um Santa Cruz to see that map of where those investments should be under economy and workforce. Um we do not need a separate economic development strategy from our equity strategy. These things should be totally ti tied together. Um and I really like that the city of Tucson has made that a priority. Um, every city contract is an economic development tool. Within existing resources, we can expand prevailing wage and higher and local hire requirements, tie more contracts to apprenticeship pipelines, and ensure enforcement mechanisms are strong so that the standards are meaningful. This doesn't require new spending necessarily. It requires clear policy direction and contract compliance. At the same time, we can redirect a portion of our existing small business and economic development funds toward cooperatives, community-owned enterprises, and businesses in historically disinvested neighborhoods that builds local wealth and stabilizes communities. Um, how am I doing on time?

Um, I think all of us have a 10 minutes a piece you're doing. I don't know. Are you Are we about three minutes? And just for your information, um, we will also be asking the city manager to put from this the questionnaires that you all received, synthesize it into a memo and a document that will help lead uh the conversation into the budget.

Okay, I have way more notes. I'm just going to skip to the last part. Fiscal discipline with moral clarity. Okay. We should explore progressive revenue strategies where legally permissible, such as stronger impact fees or vacancy related tools and advocate at the state level for tax reform. But we should not build a budget around revenue we don't yet control. So for this year, our task is clear. Align existing spending with housing stability. Prioritize climate resilience that lowers long-term costs. Use contracting power to strengthen worker standards. and focus capital dollars where they produce measurable equity and safety outcomes. If we're disciplined, we can move the needle in tangible ways without destabilizing our general fund. This retreat this retreat is about choices. We can't do everything, but we can do the most important things and do them well. If we center equity, climate responsibility, and people, and how we allocate the dollars we already have, Tucson will be stronger, more resilient, and more just, not just in theory, but in practice. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Council Guas.

Hello, Mayor and colleagues. Well, as we look ahead to 2026 and 2027, my priorities are grounded in equity, long-term sustainability, and neighborhood stability, especially for communities that have historically carried the weight of underinvestment. So, first I want to focus on um environmental justice and climate resilience that it must remain central to our work. Extreme heat, air quality, and water security are not abstract policy discussions. They are daily realities for many of our W five families. We must accelerate implementation of our climate action goals, ex continue to expand our tree canopy and cooling infrastructures and work closely with Tucson water to protect our aquifer and strengthen our conservation efforts, ensuring that our residents have clean and safe water. Uh climate resilience is both an environmental responsibility and a public health priority. Second, uh housing affordab affordability and anti-displacement strategies are um top of my priorities requiring urgent attention. As Tucson grows, we must ensure that longtime residents, especially working families and seniors, can remain in the neighborhoods they help build. So that means increasing affordability um housing you know options and supply through thoughtful infield development, strengthening tenant protections and creating more conserv or more conversations around estate planning. You know these are difficult conversations to have but I feel like we have to address it and um this will help you know create generational wealth so families can retain their homes and benefit from new developments and new investment rather than being pushed out. Third, we must deepen our investment in youth and civic re-engagement. Our young people need more clear pathways, innovative pathways into education, leadership, and meaningful employment through

partnerships with both uh the districts that are here in W 5. And those are the districts I'm focusing on uh TUSD and SUSD. I want to also expand on workforce training programs so we could connect students to real opportunities to clean energy, construction, healthcare, and um emerging industries. When we invest in our youth, we strengthen the long-term future of our city and then hopefully get them engaged in in voting and civic engagement. Infrastructure equity is also another key focus that I want to bring to the table. You know, W five neighborhoods deserve safe streets, functioning sidewalks, ADA accessibility, lighting, and road repairs that reflect the taxes residents pay, and the pride they carry in their communities. So, complete streets and safe routes to school improvements must prior must be prioritized, especially in the high injury corridors and historically overlooked areas. Economic opportunity is also critical. Small businesses on the are the backbone of our Tucson's economy, particularly on the south side. And I would like to see us support the creation, hopefully work closely with our vice mayor um to just really build on a small business coalition that I know has has been in, you know, been in um route. So something that can continue to uplift our legacy businesses and builds clear pathways for commercial ownership so more entrepreneurs can build equity and st and stability so they too won't be pushed out of these investments and future developments. Public safety must continue to evolve in a way that is balanced and community- centered prevention, diversion programs, crisis response partnerships, and well-designed public spaces. Um, preserving our culture. I really want to bring to light cultural preservation, not necessarily calling it historic preservation, but cultural preservation

to continue to, you know, contribute to our safer neighborhoods. Safety is strongest when community trust is strong. And finally something that I want to also bring um is just you know thinking thinking of strategies of how to manage future growth. So focusing on smart infill development you know mixed use use projects mixed um income projects those are stuff that I want to see projects I want to see happen. And here in Ward 5, we want to continue to strengthen our uh neighborhood associations as well as our partnerships with our nonprofits, with our stakeholders, with our leaders. And I am excited to really um fill all of our board committees and commissions, making sure that they have that we have a W five representative at each BCC so residents have meaningful representation and decision making here in this entire city. And Tucson's future depends on thoughtful planning, equitable investment, and staying rooted in the lived experiences of our communities. So, my commitment is to ensure that W five and every neighborhood has a seat at the table and a share in our city's progress. Thank you.

Thank you, council member. Um, who's next? Your honor, I was wondering if I could go now because I have to step out from 150. Yes, absolutely. Go ahead. I got to step out for 35 minutes. It's something I cannot avoid. You guys, go ahead, Council Member Cunningham. So, you guys kind of know what's coming. Let's start. song. The tree tree house. Let's start with think. Think. Uh going to pass out white papers. Um

so I'm going to start with think. Think's an opportunity for us to have the first singlepayer option for all children. Any any kid attending public school could get it.

It doesn't matter if you're chip eligible or not. There's a number of different work. There's a number of different pieces to doing it. Um, it's going to take a long time, probably after I'm off this council, but I want to plant the seeds now. Um, this white paper kind of outlines the nitty-gritty on how to get there. But the idea is is that we partner with one of the one of our providers whether it's TMC Corandlay or Banner and then we partner with Puma County and Tucson Unified School District Sunnyside A5 any school district operating in the city limits can participate. But the idea would be that folks who are not eligible for the CHIP or Kids Care could buy in to the same healthcare plan that we provide for our employees for their children, specifically their children. And ultimately, it could be we would collaborate with local employers to help facilitate that. But the idea would be again rough numbers and there's obviously work to continue about $40 a check per kid which is just very comparable to the $70 it is for multiple children per month with kid with kids care. The other cool part about it um is that uh this program would be for everybody and it would be basically that singlepayer option. Um and I think it would be something that would help us. More importantly, it would result in some cost avoidance for the school districts and that this would cover school nurses, school clinicians, uh athletic trainers, social workers, and counselors within. In other words, instead of having a school count, a school social worker hand over to you another network social worker, you'd have the same social worker, which is really for anyone who's done that work, it's an incredible dynamic as far as having

someone working each case. So, that's thing. Our next program that we're going to bring to that uh place is tree. Uh Pat also passed out that white paper. Um we're going to try to get that on the agenda. I know we're going to have a public power discussion. We're planning on having a public power discussion March 3rd. I don't want these two to be blended. I think one is completely separate from the other. Tree is set up so that actual neighbors own their own power and we utilize and adapt to technology that's that's burgeoning now and I think it's a really important piece. So those are the two programs that I want to bring forward over this next year. Uh very specifically. One is to establish a established tree. It should be budget neutral. It shouldn't cost anything. And the other one is to start think basically push the pebble down the hill. I think the way to do that is to pass a concurrent resolution with Pum County and TUSD in which we bid out the management of our self insurance together. And we don't need to do it right away, but when when the time comes, we do that. And those are the two things that have to be in place before any of these big wide eyed ideas can happen is the nitty-gritty part. I also want to thank everybody for helping us pass house. Um, and we're looking to expand or expand and initiate that program and actually see it's bearing fruit, but it's a model in which we can transition people who are on the climb coming out of detox and rehab and into their own place that they rent. It's in their name that they are powerful. And that's what house is all about. The next one is the Kidco CSP collocations. One of the issues that we're having is we're leaving money on the table. We have people enrolled in Kidco who probably qualify for uh CSP and the sub

what is CSP?

Uh community schools community schools program which is basically TUSD's after school program and a significant amount of students are subsidized by the state by participating in that program. Then we have another pe another group of people that don't qualify for CSP and end up paying like $100 a week. And then we have bits and pieces of kidco paying like $ 35 $25 a week. Well, we probably need to have it where you can we want to have our cake. All right. So, the idea behind that is to colllocate a kid code site and a CSP site. I think we should start with a one just to see if we can do it and kind of run off. There's two places there are two schools that seem to be really good candidates according to Dr. Trio. One of them possibly Lang Weaver, the other one is Kelly and and I think those are both schools but both of those schools are well enrolled. This is actually supposed to help TSU enrollment. So we'll see kind of how that comes. The other program that we're going to launch out of our office, we're going to do it kind of on a grassroots level with some public private partnerships, but any word office who wants to collaborate with me is invited to. I want to set up an $88 um athletic and arts program. If you're a kid from second grade to fifth grade and you want to be in a sport or you want to or learn an instrument or you want to dance or do drama or any of that stuff for nine weeks during a school year twice a week, it show it should only cost $88. We don't need parents having to pay $125 just to play three weeks of baseball. That's ridiculous. So, I want to make it so it's accessible for kids to kind of explore what's out there instead of being a couch spud or playing too many video games. And I know a whole bunch of parents who agree with me. So, but it shouldn't be a cost barrier. Uh, and by the way, obviously 88 bucks seems could be a lot depending on your perspective. For for for some families that's like nothing for what they're paying right now, but for other families that can be a lot. We'd

absolutely have a foundation to make scholarships available. The next part is my seven shift program. Um, this is a program where we can take social workers to courts um, and run at seven shifts a week. That means you'd work 311s, uh, 311 or 11 and a half hour shifts every week on the same days and then every other Saturday you'd work. So that way we could be open 11 hours a day, seven days a week. And think about what that means. If we have social workers available to respond, especially in the field, 7 days a week, or if the transition center was there, seven days a week, if we could enroll people in network and detox seven days a week, if we had alternative uh jail program, seven days a week, that and that means every day, every day shift, every day we'd have those services available. And we have to think about how we're going to be accessible. Speaking of accessibility, our resources are limited. We want to take a look at AI and how 311, 911, and possibly the Tucson water line can be used on a on an AI basis where some of those low hanging brute calls can be can be facilitated through AI. I think it's actually a really cool opportunity. There are multiple networks that use AI for that specific piece. And if we got it, we could be one of the we're not a lot of cities are already doing it, but I think it's an opportunity to have some cost avoidance and also improve our efficiency and service delivery uh to our to our people. Next one I want to talk about is the economy and jobs. Look, right, to be honest with you, there's all there's always these look different signs about the economy slowing down, but we always want to find opportunities. I still think we're missing the boat on a regional air carrier. I want to take a look at trying to making a run another run at Sky West Airlines and have them run out of here out of Tucson. I think it could be a winner. Also taking a look at Allegian who's who's beholden the Phoenix Mason

right Mesa right now, but I'd like to add another 20 flights daily out of Tucson to TIA. I think it's a goal we should try to set and we should we should try to do that uh as we work with the with the airport. Um they're not going to You know, they're not there's some tricks to it. We can What I don't want to do is throw money at them. When we made the American Airlines deal a few years ago, the American Airlines just took care took totally took advantage of the Tucson Airport Authority. We need to be a watchdog on them and make sure they're making good decisions. Uh, also when we think about jobs, I think about the IDA, Rio investment, and empowerment zones and how we do that. There are certain sectors that we can pre probably expand including aeronautics, optics, uh astronomy. Um, and I think recycling and sustainability is a I think that is a program we can run here, including like battery some battery recycling, maybe partnering with Fairfax and seeing some of the newer things we can take advantage of, even using uh selling off some of our methane um and having it go into the natural gas system. I know that that's not as um it's not perfectly uh environmentally friendly, but natural gas is better than coal. It's better than almost I mean it's just as good as any rice program, especially if it's coming from our landfills. We might as well use that gas somehow. Right now, we're just burning flares. Um I want to take a look at our long-term sustainability, finding permanent those permanent funding sources that each of you talk about for each program. So there there there's kind of dials and wheels that we have always working to make sure those are coming. We want it to be like a tapestry or a fabric where our long-term sustainability is all together. Um I want to build some type

of multimmodal transit to Mosaic. I think Mosaic's going to be a big piece for Tucson and we and while everybody knows my hire for non-incorporated areas in the county and stuff like that, I think Mosaic is a really big opportunity for Tucson if they're getting it right. But we've got to be able to tie that area to uh downtown. And remember, when we did the UVA in downtown, that's what the street car was for. The street car downtown in the UVA, it was too close to drive, too far to walk. We That's why we built the street car. It's the same thing with Mosaic. It doesn't make sense to drive. You can't really It's a little too far a bike. Sorry, Lane. So, maybe we do. Maybe we kind of have a a Doodlebug, which is a type of train that can go on the 12 gauge track that's already existing there, and we can make that part of Tucson. Um, I also want to talk about our water storage capacity. We'll probably have that conversation over the next two years. Uh but we've got to probably expand our water storage capacity because we're going to be end up being the central and focal point of trying to not only provide water to the region but probably to the state as we all kind of know at this table and and it's going to it's going to get gnarly. Um part of that part of that excuse me I'm sorry I'm jumping around here a little bit. Part of that long-term sustainability is procurement reform. we'll have the memo coming from my office. I've talked about it many times. I think there's some some guard rails we can put around how we do procurement and save a little money uh there as well. Um and then finally that brings me to the last one, the kind of a pipe dream, the ride into the sunset Paul Kenny and dream. If we get all this stuff done in the next 18 months, um the ex the last piece I think that we're missing in Tucson is a city college. And I know it sounds out there, but having a city

college where we can certify electricians and city workers, uh, and we can we can certify people that aren't necessarily city workers yet, but they want to be. We can also certify police officers, firefighters for the whole region right there at City College without them having to pay $250, $500 a credit hour. Uh it would even have possibly an undergraduate program where um you know you'd pay $188 a unit and that would be a lot better than what you're paying at some of the universities around the country. And I think that the city college model was set up so everybody had the best access possible to as as free as possible public education. You guys know that public education is like my thing. And you know, having a having an alternate balora that doesn't cost an arm and a leg in Tucson is how we we have some of our younger people avoiding student loan debts, giving them opportunities where there's something somewhere to go and something to do. So, those are all the pieces to it. I believe I know you won't surprise any of you that I probably have even more information fleshed out in details. Like I've written budgets for half of this stuff already, but thank you for indulging me for those 10 minutes and letting you know how much stuff is actually on my mind. It's like very specific and detailed and we got to be there and we can um I think it's important to end this with this. We live in one of the coolest places ever, man. You can go and hit the slopes in the winter and then 45 minutes later jump in the river, man. That's no one else has that. And so let's enjoy it. Let's celebrate it. Let's protect it and let's make it uh the coolest place to be with the most opportunity.

Thank you, Council Member Cunningham. Really appreciate it. Sorry we're going to miss you for a little bit. I'm going to put I'm gonna put on my YouTube. I'll be right back in 35 minutes. Okay, Councilman Lee.

Thank you, Mayor. Um, so a lot of my priorities are probably not going to shock anyone here who's who's been working with me for any period of time, but my priorities remain rooted in our charter and core responsibility and doing that as best as we possibly can. And that's public safety, roads, and parks. And in a deficit environment, discipline is really going to matter. And the very reason that we exist in this government is to deliver core services well and to help create an environment for a strong local economy and opportunities for the folks who live here. So everything that I'm focused on this year and what has been in the past and will spoiler alert will be in the future is focused on that. So first of all around core services and budget discipline the overarching idea is to pro protect our service levels especially in this deficit environment and again our charter defines our job public safety roads and parks and when we have our budget conversations I think it's essential that we remain focused on what we are responsible for and also acknowledge what we are not responsible for and we have to preserve our levels of service and we have to do more with less without destabilizing our workforce to the best of our ability. We have to exhaust every revenue and efficiency pathway before we start to consider furls and layoffs. And for me that includes looking at operational efficiencies, technology modernization, evaluating revenue sources and revenue left on the table like transit fair recovery and smarter performance metrics with city manager doing a wonderful job with his KPIs and dashboarding. So again, the deficit requires focus, not panic. And we have to protect core services first, pursue efficiencies aggressively, and take care of our employees while we're doing all of the above. So to kind of dig a little bit further down into public safety, uh again, we've some of the colleagues have talked about this really compassion and accountability and how those two are not opposite things. And public drug use remains a top concern that we hear from residents. And as we all know, we're exploring alternatives to the misdemeanor ordinance that I brought forward as a conversation starter last

year. But that does not mean that we're abandoning accountability in our community. And we have to look at the systems that are in place that will enable us to get better results for the community. And one of the things I talked about at our last meeting was the felony interim process modernization that I understand needs to be done in order to more efficiently get our TPD officers cases over to the county for consideration and hopefully prosecution. And um that is taking an old system, a fillable PDF and emailing over and modernizing it into something that looks more like case management. And that will improve tracking, improve hopefully issuing percentage transparency, meaning how many of the cases we send over are actually moving forward in the process and potentially increasing case acceptance and that will benefit multiple jurisdictions beyond just Tucson. So, we need real data and issues um so that we can do our best as TPD and the city to send over the best cases possible to our partners at the county. Now, I want to talk about potholes.

I've been thinking about potholes a lot, you know, mayor. I talked I texted the city manager multiple times this weekend about potholes.

Yes. Um last meeting I referenced a five foot long pothole that that any one of us could fit in if we folded ourselves up. In thinking about this, I I have Paul has big visions. I have a vision, mayor, of a day where potholes don't exist in the city of Tucson. And and I have some ideas here. I think we we need to flip the model of how we do road maintenance. And I've been talking to the team about how we can do this. Right now, as we all know, it's very reactive. We see a pothole, we report a pothole, constituents report potholes, and then we pray to the road maintenance gods that the potholes will get fixed in time. And we wait and we wait and we wait. And I want to be very clear that our team is doing what they can with the resources that they have. And I believe that at this table we can come up with a different way of adequately resourcing road maintenance in a different way. Right now we don't have to my knowledge a clear public service level target for how quickly we resolve potholes based on the risk and the severity. And I have also noticed that it it seems like potholes and the response times do vary across the city in some places. I know we're out in the corner at W 4. You're out there on the edge in W 5 too in some places. And I understand that some of the offices get turnarounds within a few weeks. Sometimes we're in the months. We're in two plus months before we get craters filled. So, what I would like us to start to talk about is creating a service level agreement or a target that we believe as the elected representatives of the Tucson community what people should expect from the time they report a pothole till the time that it's fixed and then figure out what it would take to do that to accomplish that target instead of what we're doing now which is putting in a request and waiting. I think that tonins deserve that level of standard and it is allow it would allow us to communicate out to the community what the target is and then figure out how to get there. And again, the first place that my own brain went is how are we going to pay for this? But I think the first step is for us to decide what we think is reasonable for our residents and then we figure out how we could

possibly get there. Um beyond adding more crews to actually go out and fill potholes, I think we should explore surge capacity contracts. So after monsoon season, if we have a lot of potholes, which we will, how can we work with local contractors to come in and fix that and get things up to speed, there also is some new technology, of course, I've been looking at and and talking to different people about who are making this technology, and they're being piloted in places like Dallas and Chicago that can detect cracks at a very small level and go out and fill the cracks with autonomous vehicles that are operated by a human. Um, but they can. The idea is that if we are so awesome with our road maintenance, it won't give an a pothole an opportunity to even be born. And so that to me is is a future goal, but I think it's something that I would really like for us to discuss and to talk about. So instead of asking what we can fix with what we have, we should ask what service levels our residents deserve and then determine what it will take to get there. Um, also along course services, I did not forget about our parks and wreck and pools. Um really to me this is just about maintaining safe and accessible parks, recreation facilities and pools for our um for our residents and especially during a deficit year I think staying on top of maintenance is going to be really really important. So supporting functions I also did not forget about everybody else who is working hard within our organization to support the people that are out in the field delivering services. So core services um only function if support systems function. So our ability to deliver public safety, road maintenance, parks and wreck depends on strong internal opera oper sorry operations. Behind every firefighter, officer, road crew, and parks employee are teams in IT, HR, finance, payroll, procurement, contracts, risk management, and a lot of additional folks. So if I forgot to mention your function, please forgive me. Um, these teams may not be in the field, but they're essential to the field. So during this deficit time, we need to make sure that we're appropriately staffing these functions, strategically resourcing them, modernizing where possible, and

structuring for efficiency. Uh I think that's absolutely critical. Also of no surprise, I want to talk about cyber security, but only at a high level due to the nature of the topic. Um the threat environment to critical infrastructure is very real. I know that we have an executive session that is being scheduled now where we will get into more detail because we are not going to talk about that in a public forum. But I am working with the FBI to have someone come brief us, mayor, ahead of time before we hear from our folks with more information about what the current threat environment looks like to municipal governments and to water utilities like like ours. So publicly we want to commit to awareness and investment and privately behind closed doors is where we can talk about how we actually strengthen our security posture and where it's essential and I'm sure you all will realize that after you hear these briefings that we invest in cyber security in our organization. Uh cyber security is not an IT issue. It's a core service issue. If water, public safety, our elections or other critical infrastructure systems fail, our community feels it immediately. Last but not least on my list is economic development, jobs, um, water and values. Kind of the intersection of all of those things. Tucson has lost jobs for the past two years straight. Not a large number of jobs, but we're definitely moving in the opposite direction that we want to be moving and that impacts families as well as city revenues. Economic development needs to align with water stewardship, sustainability, and good paying jobs. And last meeting I mentioned um the four and a half billion gallons of reclaimed water that flow past the tricro road and that opportunity. Again I agree with what council member Cunningham said with looking at additional water recharge capacity. um also advanced purification which is coming online but then taking some of that reclaimed water that is leaving the system that Tucson residents have paid for and bringing that in and putting it to use to create jobs and find the right industrial partners in addition to recharge and advanced purification and aligned employers that

are going to bring high wage long-term jobs to our region. And again, economic development for me is not separate from core services. strong strong job growth stabilizes our budget, supports families, and strengthens our ability to deliver the public services that we deliver. And so, in closing, my focus this year and always is disciplined, protect our core services, modernize systems that aren't working, define clear service standards for our residents, strengthen our cyber security posture, and align economic growth with our water reality, and stay grounded in our charter and disciplined in our execution, and we'll navigate the deficit period responsibly and emerge even stronger. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Councilwoman. Uh, Council Member Do,

thank you. What a hard act to follow. I'm tempted to say did, but I saw a lot of my concerns in yours. And I'm not going to speak to all of my priorities because I have a long list. Um, when I ran five years ago, I ran on climate, water, and neighborhood resiliency. And I got the advice, Kevin, people are concerned about potholes, and they certainly are. That's part of neighborhood resiliency, I think. um three three points in each of these. Uh under climate, um you know, we're go coming out strong on heat resiliency. One area where we're really good at putting stuff in the ground is our storm to shade, our greenwater infrastructure um uh unit in Tucson water. Um they need more funding. Um this one project costs a quarter of a million dollars. So for instance, if we can take the differential bucket that we have and give it to storm to shade, that means there could be a project in each of our wards, which I think is important. Um likewise, um and this ties to climate directly to housing security. Um people are having to pay high prices for electricity and water to stay cool. Um especially in lowincome neighborhoods. Unpayable bills means people lose their homes. And we have some eviction programs in partnership with our folks in Puma County, but but we need to pay special attention to that because once someone leaves their mobile home and have no other resources, then it it's so much harder to get them back into housing and their lives back on track. Um like like many of you, I'm a champion for pools um where kids can be outside in the summer. We have good public pools. We want to maintain our family swim hours in the summer, which is also kind of tied to water. Um, you know that I've argued for a long time that new businesses coming in should be net zero water. And I'm thinking we need to expand that. Any new large-siz development should be doing net zero water, at least doing water harvesting.

From Tumok Mountain, you can see a new development. They've just scraped the desert. And there's no requirement for them to do any water harvesting, uh, storm water management to bring back the trees that will shade those homes. um without putting in a lot of Tucson water, potable water. So, I I think we need to explore explore that. We have a commercial rainwater harvesting ordinance and it's working pretty well. Um but there are some tweaks. Our expert um Brad Lancaster has been monitoring and following. He has some suggestions and uh I'll be bringing that to the mayor council soon and I'm real excited to be talking about the larger water users. We need to get a handle on that. Neighborhood resiliency. Well, that's where everything else lives in my word. Um, w three is, you know, we have the most homelessness incidents in in in the city. Um, the most code enforcement um actions um and I don't know this for a fact, but I'm going to proclaim it. The most vacant and neglected structures. And we were so happy to see um at um Port Lo at first the old building that had been there for a long time. and the owner had a plan but kept wanting more time to to make it happen. Um, we can do more and better with our vans um and and fight blight, fight areas that attract crime um attract drug use um and get those um structures back on into the economy. Um uh finally the open use drug use and home homelessness which is not the same. Um we know that there are people doing drugs openly who have places to sleep at night and we know that there are homeless people who are able to stay away from the drugs but but I think in the public's mind combined to the same sort of irritation. Um

W 3 has been working us in many different ways. so proud to be um home of our star village um that the mayor and the vice mayor champion um which I think has been a huge success and we need to expand programs like that but we work almost every day with cashew too uh them and the housing navigators and I would hate to see we constrict any of that in the coming year because that helps people so much um they just do very good work and with that I'll give away the rest of my time. Thank you, council member. Really appreciate it. Um, vice mayor.

All right. Um, yeah, thank you everyone. I wrote copious notes trying to see what the priorities of my colleagues are. So, NPR's um, top priority of course is housing. Um, for me, increasing housing opportunity isn't just about building more units. It's about preventing displacement and strengthening stability. Um, that means moving forward with the right to return. It means investing in eviction prevention. It means expanding supply across income levels. Um, and doing it with real anti-displacement guardrails. Um, it's uh promoting housing mobility near transit, schools, and jobs. And it also means creating pathways to long-term wealth building, including first-time home ownership and supportive housing that actually moves people towards stability, not just in crisis response, which we know is very expensive. My second priority is reducing traffic fatalities and serious injuries. We can't accept that people are dying on our streets. We need better data, faster deployment of quick build safety improvements, and a real focus on high injury corridors, especially in historically underinvested neighborhoods. Transportation access is an economic issue. If people can't safely get to work, school, or child care, then we're failing them. My third priority is securing long-term sustainable transit funding and preserving universal access through fair free transit. Transit is critical infrastructure. preserving this universal access um will ensure that working families and seniors can reliably get to jobs and services. We need both short-term and long-term funding strategies and we need to rightsize the system responsibly if regional funding isn't available. Um but we cannot lose sight of the fact that universal access has been transformational for working families, youth, and seniors. For our biggest challenges, mayor, I'm just going to follow the format that you had um provided for us. I think it is continues to be housing affordability and homelessness um continues to be a strain. Um we have to focus on long-term

stability and breaking cycles of intergenerational poverty. Uh the fentinel epidemic has been devastating our families. Uh we need to continue coordinated responses that integrate public health, behavioral health, diversion and workforce re-entry and not just siloed approaches. um in this effort. We're also um struggle with scaling programs that we know work like youth employment, small business support, workforce pathways because we don't have enough funding to meet that demand. So, as we're navigating state and federal preeemption, plus a serious of misinformation problem, we need faster, clear communication so residents actually understand and can access the resources that we're investing in. Um, when it comes to climate and water, I think we need to continue being honest about our desert reality. Large-scale developments must meet strict water and energy standards, and we need to aggressively address urban heat, especially for our seniors and residents and mobile home parks. We need to continue to invest in shade, cooling infrastructure, and continued investment in cool tainers. in similar initiatives on transportation and mobility. Um, we should revisit the Jarrett Walker study, continue implementing our safety action plan, and center the lived experience of riders. Zero traffic related deaths should be our standard. That means slowing traffic and redesigning high injury corridors and areas near schools. on economic opportunity. I want to continue investing in legacy small business corridors and expand pathways for entrepreneurship and micro business ownership. That includes grants, workshops, and making city resources easier to navigate. I strongly support continuing and expanding our youth employment programs with clear pathways into city careers and long-term workforce participation. for children and youth. I think safe routes to school and it's universal access to transit are essential. Youth employment is not just a program. It's a

violence prevention and economic mobility strategy and I am proud to have been a participant in that when I was in high school in housing and affordability. Um, I support expanding the Star Village model and other low barrier congregate shelter approaches were appropriate. And we need to move forward with the right to return to protect community networks and prevent displacement. Under our safe city initiative, I want um better traffic safety data and rapid infrastructure response. I want to expand on our gun violence prevention through datadriven community-based strategies that prioritize youth intervention, trauma-informed services and cross- sector coordination to address root causes of gun violence in courts and public safety. I want us to closely monitor the safer center pilot and use what we learn to better un to better respond to fentinel and mental health crisises. Uh we need to operationalize our housing emergency framework so it actually increases access to housing and long-term stability on technology and accessibility. We need better public facing communication and digital accessibility. I'd like to see a city-wide CRM system that improves internal tracking and followup. And we must protect residences privacy so people feel safe accessing our services especially in the context of f federal immigration enforcement. In managing future growth we have to align decisions with water availability and infrastructure capacity. Growth must expand opportunity not deepen inequity. And proousing policy must include anti-displacement guardrails. Finally, I want to continue investing in our participatory budgeting and institutionalize it as a permanent part of how we govern. Shared decision-making builds trust and ensures resources reflect community priorities. I also want us to start thinking ahead about the continuation of our parks and

connections bond in 2027, improving parks as an economic and community anchors and conducting a serious assessment of public restroom access so we can expand safe and dignified facilities in high use areas. At the end of the day, all this ties back to stability, safety, and better outcomes. If we stay disciplined and align with our prosperity initiative framework, we can move from crisis management toward long-term mobility and generational change. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor. I really appreciate it. I love hearing all of you. Um, and the priorities that we all have um for me, it's about having a working family agenda, right? I I have been working on our working family agenda from the very beginning since I ran in November of 2007 or when I won in November of 2007 but even before then right so uh for me it's simple it's how do we make uh the quality of life better for working families in Tucson and um it it's simple you know it's about Um, continuing the safe city initiative because everyone deserves to have a safe park to play in, a safe neighborhood to walk walk your dog or your children in, um, safe uh, bus stops and transit centers. So, safe city initiative is a huge priority for me. Of course, housing affordability. We started it with our housing affordability strategy for Tucson. We cannot um slow down on housing affordability, especially now that the federal government is moving far away from housing affordability. We've got to be smart in how we leverage

any additional state funds that might be available and uh continue doing the work that that we started. Economic development is a huge piece of the work that we must do. And I I agree with Councilwoman Lee that it is part of what we should be doing. It's part of the core services that we should be doing. even if it's not defined in our charter. And um partnering with I agree with all of you. Some of you talked about partnering with University of Arizona, partnering with TUSD, SUSD, and other school districts uh to be able to um create long-term highwage jobs in Tucson that will not exhaust our natural resources. We need to align the prosperity initiative with economic development, with water resource conservation. All of it has to align in order for us to be able to be aggressively um either working with the businesses and companies that we already have here. It shouldn't be one or the other, right? It's small business investment, legacy business investment and expansion of um companies that we currently have as well as being able to attract the companies that tonins can say yes to that we will be uh proud to be able to bring to Tucson. So, uh, economic development, we've already started that work. um with our our uh Bloomberg Harvard city leadership initiative. We have interviewed um many stakeholders in the community with that program um and really received

the input and feedback from different stakeholders both internally through the city of Tucson and externally. I think some of you participated in interviews and in our ideation sessions. Same thing with our uh outside stakeholders. We brought them in, interviewed colleagues on uh the board of supervisors, the county administrator, tons of um stakeholders in the community. So, we're going to continue working on economic development. Um, one of one of the things that we all know where is a challenge I think we've done such an amazing job and such amazing work internally uh creating services that never existed before in the last six years uh with uh from you know housing first and serving with low barrier shelter uh creating housing navigators, our community safety, health and wellness program, we've created our Viva program. So, we're expanding on the work that we're doing together. We've spent at least a year working with Puma County and the justice system in Pima County trying to align all of the different pieces, right? The city of Tucson does some work, Puma County does other pieces. And so we've got to be able to streamline our justice system to be able to deliver better outcomes. Uh expanding uh programs that really um deflect um people from going to jail. And that's something that we're working with Puma County as well. The big gaps that we have realized we have uh as a community

is um mental behavioral health and substance use disorders and how to deal with it, right? And I always talk about um the charter. Well, the charter never ever in there says uh you've got to figure out behavioral health issues and substance use disorders. Um, but I do see it as a public health issue, a p public health issue. It's a it's a public health crisis and we've got to be able to partner and ally with Puma County and the state uh to be able to fill those huge gaps. Those are the tangible pieces that we're missing. A perfect example where we are partnering successfully is our safer center. Um, we I'm requesting that we get a report on the safer center when we have our safe city initiative update next because we have to see what the metrics are, right? What is it showing? And uh the safer center is a pilot program. If it is working, we need to expand it. All of the programs, someone said we have programs that are working. I think you said it, Vice Mayor, but we need to scale them up and expand them. I agree with that and that um I will continue working on making sure that we we're filling the gaps and we're finding the allies and nonprofits and other governments that will help us uh fill the um unsheltered homeless crisis in terms of behavioral health and substance use. Investments in our streets. Uh I think you know we've all canvas we've all do constituent work we all receive those calls tonins want to see us invest in our

infrastructure and um you know as a council member that pushed the complete streets ordinance forward back when I was on the uh council representing Wan and pass as a newly elected mayor are um move to some transportation and transit um uh priorities. I am going to continue pushing on complete streets, making sure that our transit system is not only safe but uh that we have a fully functional uh transit system and um of course part of the infrastructure investment is road investment. How do we make sure that we make uh that we have better infrastructure, that we have complete streets, and that we have safe streets for all, right? Safe streets for pedestrians and cyclists and uh people that roll around. Um and so we have to make sure that we do that uh economic development and job creation based on the prosperity initiative. I started my conversation with the economic development with the Bloomberg Harvard initiative. We are really trying to find an economic development strategy in partnership with the community and stakeholders in our region where we really take a look at the goal of not just job creation and high wage long-term job creation but also how do we bring the poverty levels down and that should be a priority for us. We do need to create jobs. We do not want to be on the wrong side of losing jobs.

They have to be long-term highwage jobs that have worker protections. and um aligning with apprenticeship programs and programs like JTED uh is something that we have to and must uh partner with with the school districts and how do we create a pipeline uh for the benefit of families from schools and school districts through apprenticeship programs or connecting them to Puma College or the University of Arizona and into uh long-term term highwage jobs here in the city of Tucson. Um, other than that, I mean, I have a whole list of things that uh we could talk about. Climate, water, and sustainability. Um, exploring pathways to increase energy resiliency through micro grids, battery storage, and other municipal solutions. I'm very, very interested in that. I think that's the next generation of work that we're going to be working on. In terms of our climate action and adaptation plan, ensuring that future large water users operate below the suggested 3D city threshold and capturing uh the opportunities for uh additional water um uh investments here in the city of Tucson. All righty. Um, I could go over over all of them. Uh, the small business program is something that's very important. International trades and workforce development. Uh, continue to shine the spotlight in Tucson. We are geographically blessed when it comes to possible partnerships

with Mexico. Um, we should uh advocate for uh the renewal of USMCA, continue working with the US Mexico Commission and strengthen the ex existing partnerships that we have with Sonora Sinaloa Baja California uh to make sure that we um become a hub for Mexican companies. This is something that I've been dreaming about, right? Uh because Tucson geographically, we're connected to Mexico. We're 60 miles away from the border. Uh connected from one of the busiest ports of entry in the country and then connect to the west coast via I 10 and the east coast via I 10, rail, etc. We've got to take advantage of that and take steps moving forward. uh children and youth we have to continue with KDCO program. I really actually like the idea that council member Cunningham has brought. How do we create value ad for school public school district inside the city of Tucson in partnership with the schools that are inside the city of Tucson? inside the city of Tucson, we could have afterchool programming as well as preschool in our local public school. And how do we take advantage of all of the programs out there, whether it's state, federal, or school district uh programs to be able to, you know, tout that value ad that if you live inside the city of Tucson, you will have an amazing school district that will service you and your family. um and you don't have to move outside of the city to have good high quality public education.

Uh in terms of growth um and having smart investment within our city, one of the reasons why I've been advocating to pass the community corridors tool is because we have to uh make sure that we're creating transit oriented development. uh making sure that that development is supporting our transit system and uh that we have um uh multi-use developments within the city of Tucson where you can work uh live and play, send your kids to the neighborhood school and have an amazing quality of job. So continue investing in infill development um so that it could help expand our housing supplies across the city of Tucson. So that's about what I've written. I know that I've forgotten some stuff, but I want to make sure that we have opportunity for discussion and I know that our city manager has some activities planned for us. If I if we if I'm correct, I don't know.

You are correct. All righty, Mr. Manager. You heard from us. I don't know if we want to take a little break to the restroom or um take a little five minute break, run to the restroom, and then come right back. Okay.

We are back everyone. Did we get Paul Cunningham back for a second? He was in here somewhere. Okay. Uh so item four. Wait a minute. Just a second because the city manager is not here. I know. And it's going to be his day. There's no no Paul. No Paul yet. Okay. So, item four, priority activities led by city manager, Mr. Tom York.

All right. Thank you, Mayor and Council, and we'll catch Council Member Cunningham up when he gets here. So, thank you all for sharing your priorities here at the table. And most if not all of you also shared your thoughts in advance. So over the weekend couple of us actually not me um kind of compiled a lot of that information into some kind of groupings we did that are around the room. Um, this is not asking you to debate the lumping and splitting, but it is an attempt to try to get you to sort of engage with the materials and a little bit with each other and then sort of express some general preference or prioritization to things because everything you said was a priority. We hear you. We also, everybody also said discipline and work within our means. We hear that and we we'll we have some discussion about the budget here in a little bit, but we won't solve any of that today. But we are laying out the priorities and we're laying out the the box within which we can work on these things. So, and because it's a retreat, we like to do wanted to get you up and moving around a little bit more than just sitting there chatting at each other. So, you will see a raid around the room, 10 different um areas that I'm going to ask you to go visit and just pay a little time with in no particular order. And at each of those 10 stations is a short or long piece of paper with things that are kind of grouped together, closer together. And I do want to thank Lane Mandel and Charlene Mendoza for helping digest that over the weekend. And then um and I'll get to the rest of my props later because I wasn't sure how we wanted to do the budget, which prop. And

then I talked to council member doll this morning. He said, "Use all the props." Of course. Of course. Don't choose. And I'm like, "Okay, so we've got the Jenga, we've got the Monopoly money, we've got my engineers ruler, we've got all the things, but we're going to just do dots for this for now. For now." So my ask is you've listened to each other, maybe work your way around the room to each of the 10 stations and formulate your thoughts and then you're each going to get six dots. Six dots. Six dots. Only six. Only six. Well, I would give you 10 dots, but you got to take four dots from one of your colleagues. All right. That's it. Cage match dots.

Can we sell them? Can you sell a barter for dark chocolate? This is worth $2, right? Because if I if if I did it with the monopoly money, you'd think there's money and you'd be like, I'm allowing this resource. But the reality is there's going to be a pile of money that's already allocated. And you first have to take $40 million out of that pile of money and spend it on nothing. And then you have to take any other dollar you want away from something to spend it on something else. But that would not be very fun at a retreat. And we don't have enough cameras set up to catch all of the action that would ensue.

But if you would indulge me for maybe 15 20 minutes um and think about how we've reflected it because again, as the mayor said at the beginning, we're going to come back to you with a report of this retreat of what we heard and we are really trying to learn hear it in multiple ways. You submitted responses to a question. or you talk here at the table. You're going to be talking amongst yourselves and making fun of me for the next 15 minutes. And that's cool.

And then that shapes the menu of things we bring back to you to say, well, to do this or these things, here's another way to approach it that might be different, but maybe we can get to the better outcomes you're seeking. Or it might be we are recommending you consider doing less of this thing to do more of that thing which is a lot of that prioritization you you were talking about. So this is the time where you So what are the instructions again? You you stand up. Okay. Stand up. You're going to do this one one thing at a time. You you literally stand up. I need stickers. Stand up. I will I will approach you with your stickers. It's very Godfatherlike moments coming where I walk up to you and I give you your six stickers. Okay.

And you're you're really it's a big white piece of paper. You're not filling it. Just apply stickers either on the blank space or if there's a particular thing on the list. You only get six. Tell us of these things. These are the the core principles that you're really trying to achieve. So begin to familiarize. Yes. I was reminded I'm the mayor and I should get eight. You should get eight. Um, so I would say what mayor, and I say this for the camera, most people are getting colored round circles. The mayor is getting stars. It's awesome. So, the mayor is already special.

Okay, please take those two. So, we don't write on the big pieces of paper. Not yet. For now, you're familiarizing where you're at. And we put it like any place on the on the paper. Any place on the Any place on the paper. Okay. If there's something written on the specific lines that you want to highlight, you can put it right next to it or you can just put it there. So 15 minutes. Is that what you said, Mr. 15 minutes on the clock? That takes us to 205 and change. All right. Vice Mayor, you still only get six. Okay, you got to choose your color. You're welcome. All right. Thank you. Oh, good job.

Six yellow. Okay. All right. You You keep What you have in your hand?

Do We don't use anymore

either toward the bottom or now you're just like showing us where your emphasis are. I brought my own block. You got purple. And you got stars. Tim, can you put two dots on one piece of paper?

You can. You can vote your dots however you want. Just a reminder, mics are still council member

How many times did Taho come up? Many. This one has

strength. Strengthen what

and the whole city is like Have you not found

you're within the range of we know you're there.

If you go lower half, you're good. You're doing fine. There's not enough chatter in this room. This is how things have. We have the Can I help? the better. Okay. No.

I think you have a trick and then that one. But what cracks me up is the way Amaya kept clapping her little hands. She's just so happy with Chuck E.

Stuff like that just cracks me up. And then Naomi was doing I told my daughter she's doing a certain dance doing that stickers over here. Anybody still have stickers? Don't forget this important one over here that was hard to read. What happened? Sad. They were blocking out. I think it should combine with the other one. I think the two on the end seem similar enough they could be together.

Let's combine them all. No, come on. That's just silly. Let's combine them. Selena, are you still on? I can't wait to the fall. You're going to open. Wait, really? just half of it.

They wanted they wanted the game and interviewed them yesterday. So, we were just taking pictures. There's going to be a twoinut clip on what? I've been successfully using it for 20 years. That's the only

April yesterday. It's going to be all in the 80s. I mean, it wasn't stated as a rule. You didn't say it was

Anybody still packing circles or stars? Do we get another round of stars? This time we have to try to knock each other over while we put them up. That's why I'm saying this. I'm like, I need to get woken up. I need to wake up, right? Do a little jelly. It'll be good for us. My head hurt. You made me think my brain is burning. I felt like there was a trick. I felt the pressure or something similar.

This creme brulee tea is small. I have some. No, it's called it's olong tea, but it's the flavors creme brulee. So, it's really good. All right. Good. You encourage whatever you want. This is these are the mayor and council. Perfect.

All right. Thank you all. We're uh ready for step two of the exercise. Thank you for doing this. And you all have a a pen and some relatively similar colored stickies to your dots. The mayor's of course had stars and she gets just giant pieces huge.

So this is not at all a reflection of the back. All right. I I did want to note that some of you pointed out a couple of things that didn't appear on the dot voting and um there are four things that I'll mention and these four things were not put on the dot voting because you all said them and those four things are water conservation, road maintenance and pothole housing afford affordability like all this stuff all the housing affordability except for maybe some specific specific things and then PAS and water safety slash so water so you have water conservation which is and we we're very familiar with that that's that actual efficiency and conservation of our users but also separate from that is our security and our safety of our water supplies so those are both water appears twice in those common teams so we're taking those as basically risk Um, now with your magic markers and your um, sticky notes, if you wouldn't mind taking about 5 to 10 minutes, which you're you're running ahead. We were at 2:05 on the previous one. It's 2:00 now, so you're efficient. You're running like a well machine. You have till 2:10 on this one, which is if there's any explanation you want to do, anything you thought was missing that you heard today that you want to add to a category, anything you want to write relatively quickly on a sticky note, and add to the white space on any of these categories. You can include comments like this was in the wrong place and it should have been over here. However you'd like to do that,

however you'd like to add some flavor to your input. This is this is your 10 minutes to do that. Sweet. Mayor, I did get a text with some questions. If if anyone could explain to folks watching what's on the different pages, that might be helpful. I don't know if it's doable. Jim's going to come with me and we're going to go while you're doing this in between now and 210. We're going to go chart the chart. For those of you watching at home that are the still camera is going to become a mobile camera.

You'll zoom into

while we do that. What is the instructions? If there's anything you want to add, Madam Mayor You can write whatever notes or guidance you want to provide to us. Whether it's you want to explain how you did your voting, whether you think a thing is on the wrong sheet, whether you think something was glaringly missing. And you just write it on a sticky and add it to Okay. white space. Okay. All right. Or you just catch me later and tell me where I normally

over here. So you're going to hear me talking and I'm just explaining to the live studio audience what we're doing. This category is things that are around um discussion and governance related to our uh citizens and customers. So it includes things like our boards, committees and commissions as as a group and how we educate community members about the services of the city. So that uh is what is on this category with no doubts as yet. We have a category that's around technology. Basically, it's, you know, modernizing our digital systems. Everything from our client relationships management management system for CRM to video initial appearances for for justice. So, it's it's kind of a technology box. Many folks there a justice which is uh community safety related to justice, gun violence initiatives, community court, health, you know, services for behavior, health and substance abuse disorders, things of that nature as a category. This will all find its way into the memo. We have kind of a a housing, but not not necessarily housing directly. It's how do we create the environment for housing whether that's zoning tools um getting people housed through like that star village which is a pilot now we continue to expand it how do we work with local developers the private sector in order to get more housing we have that category here working our way counterclockwise they're on the road we have kind of uh youth employment

education how are we working to create opportunityities for youth in Tucson, but also pathways into into the workforce, whether that's with the city or in other um other areas. And then how do we do our best to either break down barriers or provide ramps over barriers for folks uh especially youth in order to access the that economy, access jobs, access training, access prosperity. Here we have Gohead. I'm gonna let you do your thing.

Go ahead. I'm gonna step behind the wall for a second. Jim, I'll be right with you. We're halfway through. I'll be drinking my sustainably sourced and responsibly packaged water which is in a metal recyclable can. All right. Here we have things related to transit um but actually multimodal things related to the safety of our ability to for folks to move around the community whether that's focusing on our high priority corridors for incidents as uh uh our transit system at large. um expanding opportunities, bus rapid transit, things of that nature, moving people around.

This one's keeping people safe. Thank you, Council Member Kenningham. Keeping people safe while we moving them around, creating the opportunities for them to move around. inter related a little different.

Okay. Gota have both here. We have things that are around um there's three items on it. I'll just tell you reducing permitting barriers in smart infield development with capital investments to align with our neighborhood um needs and preventing displacement by preserving community networks and neighborhoods. So it's around prosperity but in the area of how do we help people get work done in the city um through these very targeted investments with also some additional things coming into this category as well here hanging with the mayor with her large orange sticky notes which you'll see prominent here we have um nexuses to sustainability in the form of things like regulation of large scale development with regard to water and energy pathways to entrepreneurship and micro business. So how do we develop an economy that's right for Tucson? Um recognizing the strengths that we have and the resources we're trying to protect while trying to create economic vitality. uh and that can be our built environment that already exists and how are we building the future environment and the economy that goes with it. And then finally things around um environmental justice, climate resilience. Um, somebody has suggested center or centering environmental justice, building climate resilience, implementing Tucson resilient together, electrifying our city, decarbonizing our city um, operations. A lot of climate resilience happening here on this gym, as you follow me around the room, I'm getting the thumbs up. I hit all 10 as far as you can tell. Okay. Hopefully

that was helpful to the folks watching at home or watching on video replay. This was occurring on February 23rd, 2026. So when you're watching the reruns on the ME TV channel, just recognize that's why we're dressed like we are. This happened in 2026. And the microphones are still

Thank you. Did Did Pat scare everybody off from this category?

No, I wasn't. It's a good one. I feel bad for it. You know, it's it's it's that kind of thing where you're like, "Not every category is going to get all the love." It's a little sympathy post. Oh, it's lonely. Not anymore. City managers are still out there. Did they Did they pack up the food? I'm sorry, Jim. Jim, as Jim zooms in on Lane, sorry, it's just going to turn into an office style documentary. Really nice.

Turn it into a shop. It's probably completely It's gone. It went to people in need. It was really good food. Was it? That was good. Who was in need? I'm just trying to get myself out of some hot water.

We are winding down. We have um one more part of this before we take another quick break before the I've got the mayor still ser this is where I I fill the time by saying did everybody have their crying moments over the weekend looking at Punch the monkey and his name's Punch it is for folks listening monkey asking you to punch the monkey. That's the monkey. No, I was crying about Alyssa Lou. Well, there's that. That's crying. Mhm. Like in a joyful way.

That was so amazing. I've never seen someone so happy. It's almost like us doing this retreat right now with joy. Performance was I want to be as effortless looking as her. This was your short program. Get ready for the long program. I'm going to get nervous. Oh my gosh. It's the Macak in Japan who was abandoned by his mother and has been raised by a stuffed animal and he carries his stuffed animal. It's It is sad and they're mean to him and they bully him. But they're getting better. They're accepting him now. They should because the whole world has accepted him.

Yeah. people willing to do what it takes for punch key the monkey. I got to tell you the high draw point on the on the hot mics. Mr. Kenny, the high draw point for me was definitely uh the uh Quinn's younger brother Jack scoring the pole. Yeah, I mean that was high drama. I I don't watch a lot of sudden death. So the golden goal, whatever you want to call it. The golden goal. I mean, that that was pretty good. It wasn't your rap performance that was the highlight of your week. I know. That's what I thought you were going to say. That's what the whole city's talking. It

was in the agenda. Everyone will discuss during lunch. Yeah. See, it's waterpool. I moved here last night. Don't encourage him. He'll break out in I was hoping it would happen. Pack you up. It's been stuck in my head all week. You're a superstar, man. I just want to credit Josh Mansky for making it. He's like one of the best rappers in Tucson. He's the one who made it. Yes. He made it cool. I just wrote some stuff down and said, "Hey, about this." He's so talented. It's really cool. Was your event well attended? Yeah, it was sold out, I think. Oh, good. Yeah, it was packed

with talent like that. It's hard to imagine not need to sell it at all. We'll just need to do another one so that the other members of the council can participate. No thanks. You could totally do you could do a comedy set props. I can picture it with props. Props. Like carrot top. That's what That's what you'll do after you get done with council. That'll be your next career. What's the guy who does the angry comedy for Black? Oh, Louis Black. The one who just completed Louis Black. Yeah, I like to do this black. Yeah, that kind of grumpy Yeah, grumpy old man comedy. I like grumpy old man comedy.

Thank you, mayor. All right. Yes. Thank you for waiting for me. No problem. You're right on time.

So, to conclude this part of the agenda, if you'll indulge me one more time, and you're none of you were prepared for this. So, um, would you like to share any of your thoughts verbally of what you heard from each other andor when you were looking at the materials that was submitted and the chance to look at at what you saw today? and kind of what we want to know is was this at least a little bit helpful in trying to get out of the table or onto the walls your priorities and um what you'd like to see from us coming forward as we as we put the budget. So we

yeah I'll start I learned so much from each and every one of you but I want to highlight Nikki for deep dive slight the potholes. Thank you. Yeah, the potholes are very deep to dive into. I've talked about potholes for years and usually, well, I can amplify your concerns. I can find out, oh, they're not doing it all over the city. They're just starting in W so and so. Um, but let's tackle it from the top down.

Would you like to go around your And anyone that wants to jump in, I think it's this is a a perfect time to just have a conversation.

So, I I left out the two transportation pieces because like I think there's a mishmash and I think there's stuff that goes on one and one that goes on the other. There's there's one or two I absolutely want priorities on that one. One or two and there that could be like four topics. It could be three topics. You combine them both. You could combine them both or you could do the same thing. So that one was really weird for me. This one was basically the parks one where I just This is like the parks and youth one which is kind of my my thing. So I I'm I really have this belief that as we invest in our youth and our parks, we we get better we get results on way other things because we just get engagement from those those were my my kind of thinking behind it. Obviously modernizing it so we can do all the things we want to do is kind of like that it's so boring but it's also so important and so necessary

and that's mayor and that's kind

and that's kind of some of the stuff that that we want to we really want to have. So I think hey man I think it it it's a really good exercise and uh I commend the mayor for putting this in a room like this especially after a council reset where we have uh you know two new members and and alignment. I think it's important to do this type of stuff. So it's a good exercise and gives us kind of some clarity on where people see on this one. I'm like the lone wolf, but this one this one was a successful because for me because it was the only one that actually talked about expanding our economy and if we really want to meet our budget needs, we have to we have to be aggressive on and and take some risks on how we expand our economy. We have to think about the economy not just in creating surplus jobs but uh and able to incubate jobs and and incubate industry uh trying to find another sector. My mom and I were driving back from the legislature on Thursday. And my mom said, "Well, we should have the four A's, aeronautics, Air Force, University of Arizona, and astronomy." And that could be the four A's. It's just like the five C's. And I for those of you who are under 30, the five C's um were citrus, cattle, cotton, climate, and

copper, copper. And so that's kind of what how this stuff runs. And it's true.

Another se we have to look at another sector development. We also have to look at how many people leave fe leave Tucson to Phoenix every weekend because we don't have features here like again water parks like some of the better concert tours some of the live nation shows that we used to get at TCC that we don't those are things that are actually economic drivers for us so I I I think as we as this you know discussion evol evolves uh I think it's important that we don't leave out economic development in this conversation because it's that money that drives everything that we want to do. And so, uh, that's kind of what that was the only one that really had like some true economic surplus job development and whether we are going to expand our economic sector, our manufacturing sector, uh, our optics sector. Those are the sectors that are kind of our bread and butter and we've got to figure out which ones we're going to use to do that. I actually think there's some with this with this water thing evolving and thinking ahead five 10 years the agricultural sector will be will present some opportunities for us as well. That's my thanks for letting me ramble.

Thank you. Any others? Go ahead. um the post-it note there on the corner and the other one I felt like belonged together and I really liked the um the post-it note on the far one from you mayor about how it seems like a good area for a dedicated funding source. I got really excited when I saw that.

Yeah. Um just kind of expanding a little bit what council member doc um Paul Kunham said was like with this I I feel like it's the umbrellas parks and wreck but I added our community centers just really how to like revamp some of our community centers or re-engage with some of our community centers and thinking of that in terms of after school programming our arts and culture and then leading into arts and culture. I really want to think of that as a as a kind of like a vessel for economic development. So thinking of our you know rapid bus possible or just any of our um very busy corridors to think of like placeeping strategies like murals or street furniture. So it creates more of a a destination and then leading into like economic development. put if we could start really identifying um other areas besides the core area of destinations for our broader Tucson community. So I put like yeah just more cultural corridors, historic corridors or call it something else. And then I think that was the meme. Oh, for this one I put the quote, "Nothing stops a bullet like a job." That Homeboy Industries model really focusing on jobs for formerly incarcerated um folks that can't vote, can't drive. So, thinking about um how can we create real jobs for these folks so they don't go back into incarceration or become, you know, homeless or become drug addicts or just go back on the streets. So, how can we be really intentional or mindful of thinking of job opportunities for those that are coming out of the system? Yeah, I'll add um there's some internal stuff sprinkled

throughout all of these pages, but there wasn't a big page that was like our own internal operations and how do we do things better and how do we find efficiencies that will lower our cost of doing business which can enable money to do other things, right? And I I know council member Cunningham talked about it this at the last meeting, but when we look at the forecast, and we haven't even seen the the five-year forecast numbers so far, it's not going to be very pretty. And I feel very strongly about making sure that we're doing whatever we can do to look for all of those efficiencies because I also do not want to get to the point where we're having to talk about furloss and layoffs and impacting our workforce. So I think to me that continues to be a top priority is internal. A lot of the stuff is kind of external facing programs above and beyond what is the minimum requirement. And I don't want to be a dream killer here today because it's important that we have a vision. Um but also we've got to look inside of our organization and do a lot of work.

Yeah. I I um I appreciate having these conversations because we usually are so focused on the issues either in study or in regular session. We don't have an opportunity to just share the dream and um the vision but also how do we add everyone's voice into the decision- making process as we move towards a really difficult budget year. Um I really like that you keep us on track and focused and disciplined uh you know to look at the um efficiencies internally like we need to do those exercises as well. Um, I look around and hearing all of you, I really loved also that you did a a deep dive into roads maintenance and is it time for us to take a look at how we do roads maintenance and compare ourselves to other jurisdictions our size so that we can have a much more effective road maintenance program. Uh, I really really like that. Um, in terms of bringing in uh the priorities that I heard from everyone, I I know that everyone's thinking about economic development. How do we create jobs? How do we line it up with our um water resources and other resources that we have here in Tucson? Um, you know, thinking about the challenges as well. Uh for me as mayor, I usually try and go to a solutionsoriented, right? Hear the challenges and see how

do we go to a solution. Um and how do we partner? We should know we're not alone and we shouldn't, you know, how do we partner with Puma County? How do we partner with a state? I'm not sure if we can partner with the federal government right now. But then how do we um not just survive but thrive even in very very difficult economic times and in very difficult political times in terms of uh the federal government attacking uh cities around the country. And so when I was looking at the different places, I was thinking, okay, how do we find a solution that will um help us create these opportunities on this paper? Uh, and in looking at some of them, I'm like, okay, well, here is a perfect place to talk about how do we create a funding source for this work and then how do we with the parks one, with the youth uh page one, I think that parks belongs there too as well, council member Vajas. and and that very particularly we have partners like visit Tucson, Puma County should be a partner and then in this area and parks connectivity to parks you know uh bike and pet infrastructure and also connecting it to arts history and culture because we all know and we've seen the Somoso heritage um strategy for Tucson It leaves our arts, our culture, our history, it leaves us

money every year. And so, how do we highlight that piece and how do we create um opportunities as well for funding? How do we have a conversation with Pima County? Uh I hear they're thinking about a possible bond election. How do we align our needs? Because of course, we all pay property taxes, right? We all are part of Puma County. So, how do we bring the priorities um in terms of our parks and connectivity and arts and culture needs to the table so that Pima County can take a look um at bonds and also uh the vice mayor talked about the parks bond expiring soon and so us trying to plan ahead. Uh those don't take money. It's just about lining ourselves up and having conversations with the community about how we fund them. And so, uh, MAC and the zoo, um, the zoo tax, which is a tenth of a sales tax, that's expiring, I think, in 28th. And so how do we line up these conversations and and speak with tonins about there are other ways of investing in ourselves uh to the areas that leave us leave us money leave us funds and create a good quality of life. I think vice mayor you talked about uh creating destination type of investments um not just for tourists but also for use of our youth and in our community. I really like that and and that's a place where we should uh explore that right. Um, a lot of people ask, you know,

usually compare us Tucson to Phoenix and, you know, they say it's Phoenix has all these things, right? They have freeways, they have this, they have a, you know, light rail, they have and and they have a transit authority. And I usually say, well, Phoenix chooses to invest in themselves. They have all kinds of dedicated funding sources from public safety to transit to transportation. You know, they say yes to investing in themselves. And so, um, I think we've got to be able to, yes, think about the budget, but think about how do we supplement, um, in partnership with Puma County and the state and, uh, ourselves, how do we supplement the investments that we need, um, to our budget process. So, I'm just trying to put it all together from what I've heard you all and trying to find um investment solutions as we move forward.

Well, I jumping off that the prop 407 bond. I think I can't remember how we structured that debt. Did we retire that debt that uh so council member Cunningham the Prop 407 is voter approved bond authorization. So, we take out the debt in periodic chunks and then we pay it off under the secondary property tax. Um, and the tax expires on 2018. Does the debt expire? The 2028? Yeah, that's what I mean. That's okay. The program ends, but the the debt will continue for about 20 years after that,

but there's a debt schedule that is paid down over time. So, there's kind of two capacities. If you wanted to talk about could that secondary property tax be accessed for future investments. One is the tax rate itself and the other is how much unused capacity is in there. I can say at this table there is unused capacity that could be accessed in a voter approved initiative without increasing the secondary tax rate right now. Right now well we got to wait till 28. You you wouldn't necessarily have to wait till 28. And it could be the secondary that capacity could be used for parks for

anything that is of a capital need that um basically if it if it outlasts the debt. Okay. So we do and my CFO is here ready to kick me under the table. But we we have typically structure our debt as a 20-year debt. Whether that's water revenue obligations or or this debt. It is not unusual to consider like a 10-year debt cycle. So, for example, you know, when we when we buy a building or we build this or that easily can be debt financed, some of our like bigger apparatus like in the fire department or things like that like a a ladder truck perhaps could qualify for more like a 10-year debt. So,

you didn't kick me.

Well, so I'm just trying to think out loud. I guess we'll go off go over it a little offline, but I'm trying to figure out out loud if the more strategic move is. So, let me ask this. The the 407 bond, if I remember correctly, that parks bond did not did that did that involve an increase that expires on the secondary property. the council may cunningham I don't know all of the details of 407 other than um I believe it was structured to not drive an ongoing increase to the secondary property tax so I think it was accessing existing capacity that capa that capacity frees up as we pay off the debt over time

so we do have existing capacity and where it kind of shows up um on on a different ledger is that we have uh an annual debt service payment that we make. So the there's a there's money going out that's funded by the secondary property tax as we pay off the debt. You both create capacity within the existing tax rate that the voters would have to approve us to access and you have less money going out the door after that full 20 years. Right? So there's money going out and then there's capacity that has to be and in 17 did we get a really favorable interest rate?

Um I would have to check the interest rates but we've had good interest rates on debt for the last at least decade. Um most of our debt is 3%ish. We've recently been looking at close to four. I just don't want to issue debt on top I don't want to issue debt at five four or five% on top of debt that we're we're already paying 3% on. you know, like so I'm just trying to I'm trying to maneuver how that finance would work and really kind of get a realistic understanding what that capacity would be. I'd also probably want to keep it focused on parks because that's where we've been successful.

Yeah. Well, I think that it we have to have a a separate conversation about okay, what's next, right? What what is next? Is it parks connections, arts and culture investments? Uh remember that um there are other types of um tools that we could use to create additional investments. Right? A lot of people ask about uh property taxes versus sales taxes and property taxes are more progressive. Are there uh opportunities to create property tax districts uh for investments? I'm not sure if those uh generate a lot of a lot of money. Uh but you have to create a district. It's kind of like the ones that you're uh suggesting with municipal improvement districts. Council member Cunning, I worked uh with the city of Tucson 20 years ago uh when we did have municipal improvement districts and those you need to have the property owners sign into those u municipal improvement districts and people actually pay them through their property taxes but they pay for those improvement districts. So there are a lot of mechanisms we can talk about but um we those are I think left for um additional conversation but it we should be thinking about and we should be thinking about how we work with Pima County because they're already having you know at least starting to think about what's next in Puma County bonds haven't passed a bond in since 2015 I believe it was the last

one. So, it's been a long time. So, myself and W five, Miss Baras talked about a couple opportunities

uh specifically with the Ko site mosaic where quite frankly it it's out of the city per se, but if it did come into the city would most likely be work five. And so, I think we're going to try to try to engage those folks offline and see kind of um what kind of opportunities afford. I am not I've had my doubts about the county on certain things, but if this Mosaic project comes to fruition to say that the way that it's going to come come to fruition, it it affords us some things that we are losing to Phoenix right now. A lot of the I talk about how we have families leaving for Phoenix for the weekend. Mosaic actually is an equal equalizer for it. And so if we can if we can get the right collaboration with the county to invest in it, um then I think that that's like one of those partnerships that's just lowhanging fruit. It actually makes sense for us. Um and I think there's some I think there's some negotiation uh that's involved there. But again, I think that's a that's mostly a a word five thing. I don't want to be, you know, uh stepping over my stepping over anything. Well, and these are ideas. We're just sharing ideas in terms of how do we improve

that curb, the curb and how they harvest that rainwater and all the cool things they do out there are pretty neat things and it would be pretty awesome if uh we were working together on that. And that goes back to talking about the multimold transit opportunity. Um where if you have if you have a athletic entertainment district that you're supposed to have and that's kind of what the tip was set up for um how it how it connects to downtown will make it that kind of you actually rationalized the vision there. So I think

well and and part of what you said with the mosaic quarter is our downtown and how do we work with Ron Novo to make sure that we are continuing to invest in our in our downtown and look at our infrastructure, right? The TCC, Leo Rich Theater, the music, the Linda Ronstat music call. How do we continue investing in our downtown so that it continues to grow and flourish and bring those opportunities that we have because that's inside the city already. And so, how do we make sure that we're partnering? When I talk about partners, Roma was a huge partner uh of investing in our downtown and the entire corridor on Broadway all the way over to uh Park Place. So,

lot to do and housing and housing is a part of what Rio Noeo is looking at now in terms of their investments, which is really exciting because I think it's an important part of economic development.

Yep. And how do we activate those parking lots along the Ron Novo route? Y um and reactivate the empty big box stores throughout the route to make sure that we are uh reinvesting and uh creating the sales taxes and the jobs that we want to see happen. So, lots lots of good exciting things uh that we can continue talking about, but I think that it's good. I think this is a good start. I think we've heard from each other and we can use the study sessions to expand on all of your ideas. With that, did you did you get what you needed to get from the exercise we just did, Mr. Manager?

Yes, Mayor. And thank you all for for uh doing that. both the pre-questnire and the exercise today. Hopefully, you found it somewhat engaging. Uh we definitely found it um very informative to us and it's nice for me to have the whole team here from you all directly and collectively because we we want both of you to be happy. We want the mayor and council to be happy and we want the mayor and the council members to be happy. Um and so that and we'll again incorporate this into the report back that we provide to you all for your um for as documentation of the meeting but also it it becomes some guidance for us moving forward.

Did you want to then move to the next item because I know that you wanted to talk about budget 101. We can certainly do that. Mayor, if you're ready. So item five is next. You can take take off. City of Tucson budget 101 overview by city manager Mr. Tamir. Thank you all. Okay, this is the day. Uh we're now we're going to do the uplo magic part. So um I was struggling with how do we present the budget in a a way that's a little bit different than just the static things on the paper. Mhm.

Um, and so I went through the, you know, different stages of of of do I go with the Jenga pile, right, where I put the jingle Jenga up there and I equate each block to a hund00 million, which is about what this stack would be. This is our $2.4 billion budget is like a full set of Jenga. And then I actually pull a piece out and then the whole thing crashes and they say, "That's what you're doing to me, people." But I thought, no, that's a Kevin D move.

So, I'm not going to go there with the classic Jenga, but I will I did bring it. Um, also though, I do think when we try to communicate this to the public, um, for example, Council Member Bros, you've asked for us for like a one pager on the budget, and these are my two booklets of the budget. Um, and the binders are even bigger. So, magic

magic. We're we're going to look at maybe doing a quick video where we do use a prop whether it's Jenga or blocks or monopoly money to just try to give an explainer to the general public so they they can kind of get a little bit more familiarity with what we're doing. So, uh for today I did bring the monopoly money and you'll just have to bear with a little a little uh little demonstration here and then we'll go into some more detail. So, I'm holding in my hands if every dollar of the monopoly money was a million dollars, this is $2.4 billion. So, hundred million $100 bill is $und00 million. Okay, this is our annual in and out of the city. It's $2.4 billion. Our reserves are this roughly $200 million. So, this whole 2.4 4 billion rides on two or 300 million. If we throw in the water fund, you're at 300 million. So, your rainy day reserve is roughly 150 million, 140 and and 130. And then um you have some you do have some one-time dollars that we that we talk about. You had the framework dollars, you have the investment fund. you. This started off at about 250 $300 million and we have spent it. We've invested it. We've put it to work in the community. Now it's down to this. So your your ability to manage the risk of this on an annual basis is really just that much money. Okay. So 2.4 Four billion still sounds like a lot, but most of it's restricted to something, right? Is it this what I'm going to dollar bill, y'all?

No. Give me the water money. Okay, there you go. So, there's your 300 million of the water water fees and revenue rates go in. We provide safe, reliable water service. Federal pass through. Um there there's uh there's Oh, why are you giving it all to Paul coming? I'm giving it to the mayor. All right. Uh, would you like to run a um uh environmental services? We we have garbage and recycling. There you go. There's How much are you giving him? I gave him 200 million. Just hit it, too. Environmental services. Um uh you like housing. So, we've got housing uh and related. So, there's 300 million for the housing. Is that HUD or what is that? That's all the stuff.

CDBG HUD. All right. CDBG. Some of you were talking about like road safety. So you got a little prop 411 there and other things for you. You got a little herf action. That's what we do with all of our roads. Some RTA in there. Um I get Let's see what Well, all your stuff's in the general fun. Okay, I'll take that. It's not very big. Let's just say you've got some additional access to federal dollars. We've got other propositions like 407. We've got other things we do. And then I'm going to hand you the remaining $200 million. Stole the bank. Hey, we What about making change? We got TCC and the golf fun.

That's all in the general fund. Why' you Why'd you leave your stash? I know. I should have never left my stash unattended. So, um you got you're paying for most of the housing, your roads that we're investing, your ES, your water. Um, and we've got the voter approved propositions. Now, I'm holding what looks like $800 million. That's our general fund, except we had the state uh flat tax,

income tax. We've had reductions in our economy, a slowdown that has resulted in reductions in our sales tax revenues from the state and from local. So there's $50 million I'm just going to set aside there. So now I've got $750 million. This is what you have to work with really at the end of the day in order to to do all the other things. Now, that doesn't mean we can't use the road dollars differently to do it smarter, to do it better, to do it more efficiently. We can use some of the housing dollars differently to keep people housed and and things of that nature. I'm not I'm not being dismissive of dismissive of any of that. We also know that an enterprise fund like the water utility might be able to in fund fund water efficiency in our other operations, right? Irrigation efficiencies. We we accessed state conservation fund to do efficient um fixtures and water savings in our publiclyowned housing stock. So we we're creative as anybody could be, but we got 750 million to work with. I think the thing that I want to leave you with today is 550 million of that roughly. It's 530, but we're going to call it 550. That's people.

That's our people. That's people in the general. That's staff. That is staff. Their benefits, their pensions, their their ability to do the work of this community. This this includes our firefighters, our police officers, our c our community safety, health and wellness folks, our parks and recreation workers. This is people. So when we when we rep prioritize and we're working within a fixed amount of dollars, we're either moving people from what they're doing now to what they're going to do in the future. Bless you.

Which can be done and we do that. But there's also challenges with that. It's taking people who are trained to do one thing, asking them to do something else or we need more of the people doing the something else. We need less of the people doing the things that they've been doing.

The the tool we use on that is we do we can do hiring freezes, we can do hiring frosts, we can do changes in in our force, changing the number of people we have. What's also though in here is our compensation for our employees. So you could go to the Bank of Cunningham and take the 50 and pull 14 million out of it. That's what our pro are headed to be proposed compensation adjustments for next year. So you you have those choices, but that's that's where that's all moving people around what you pay them and how many we have. And then this is the money you have for stuff and things is $200 million roughly.

And that doesn't include fuel. that includes fuel, tools, computers, subscriptions to it, all of us comes out of this. So that is my budget demonstration, budget 101 for today and then I'll give you an update on where we're at. So there is there is hope as we move toward the really tough decisions ahead. So when we met with you on um when the heck was that? Was that the 18th? That's right.

Okay. Last Wednesday, we had uh presented to you this three-year financial plan, which will become a five-year financial plan because the outer years are just scarier. But that's good. We showed you that we had about a $27 million operating deficit for the year we're in. and looking ahead about a $64 million operating deficit for the year ahead and that we were going to run out of money and by run out of money we still have our little pile of reserve practice. We've done some of the initial work and when we get to the meeting of the 17th of March, the 17th of March study session will give you an updated view of the world which will go the full five years and that's when the tougher work begins. um our $27 million for this fiscal year. We've been able to bring that down, I'm going to say 17 million down to about 17 million. Um now that's not structural changes, that's onetime spending, but what it does is preserve more cash in the bank. So now we're chasing 17 million for the year we're in, not 27. For next year, the 64 has become 36. So that's all if you accept our first round of recommendations, which you haven't seen yet. Um, but that $36 million deficit, we feel we can stand behind and say these are changes that will be to the benefit and it not that they're not they're not that they're easy, but they're easier than some of the things that are ahead. So what that also does is when you take the credit for the roughly $10 million decrease for this year and the roughly

and and you know 20 years. So you start to look like next year we might um the running out of money piece starts to get closer to zero. We need it to get to not just zero, we need it to be positive

because we've already written checks against future years for promises made to the community. So the the real rolling up the sleeves begins on the 17th. What helps us get to the 17th is you're going to get a benefits recommendation for employees that is still very employee centric, very much in alignment with what we've done the past few years and it saves us several million dollars in the general fund. um like we did just recently where we um recommended not doing the pay ahead on the public safety pension. We recommend doing the the basic um pay everything we're supposed to pay per the schedule, but don't don't put extra into the trust. That saves you money. Um, and then we did a hard scrub of the unmet needs of the directors and we're going to show you everything they asked for and then everything we're saying, okay, let's give it a tenative, put it in the base. Um, those are the three things that the work in 26 plus the work in 27 is what gets you to the 36, but we're still now it's a $36 million adjustment to the budget.

Yeah. Go ahead, Tim. Are we going to get the opportunity to see the the one-time spending that's not going to happen? Kind of line items so that we're aware that this is how we got to this number and we're not going to do whatever this thing is because this thing may be important to one of us and we just might want to know.

You you will. And so just for clarity, the FY26 one-time spending was the 7.6 6 million for the PSP or SPA head and I know you had some concern over the 1.5 that was around um the open drug use. The reality is at where we are in February, no matter what happens the rest of this fiscal year, we won't be the we wouldn't even if we said let's go full boore on something new which we haven't quite yet that wouldn't occur in this fiscal year. So, it's a it becomes now a savings in 26 that we have to solve in 27.

Okay. Not to go off on a tangent, but just the just the idea of expanding the pilot hours from two hours a day to a full day is not anything we can realistically accomplish before July 1st. I'm going to defer to Liz Morales about the status of community court and um Thank you, Mr. Manager. I you are talking about community court and not the ATJ. Uh what I'm talking about is the pilot that we're doing in OD where our officers can put somebody from their vehicle in front of a judge for initial appearance and they have two hours a day and the hours change from day to day. So it makes it really difficult to utilize that.

Yes. So it I think we can continue to explore how to expand that. I don't know that we need to add an additional judge at this point. It's just how to use the the staff time of the judges. And it's not just the judges, but there's the admin team. So, we I think we can continue to look at how to do that. Um, and then decide if there's any funding needed for that, but I think we can do it within the existing budget on how to keep expanding. Okay. Music to my ears. I just want to accomplish the objective and hopefully not cost us a lot of money.

And and to just be a little more explicit on it, if I could go a little bit, um, two years ago, we put into the budget a pro a judge prom. So, whenever we hire a judge and we have a certain number of judges that we hire, they get a four-year term. But three, two years ago, you approved a code revision that allow us to hire a prom judge, which is now um on a two-year cycle. So, we did hire we added a prom judge and we're funding it fiscal year by fiscal year. So we did in this when I'm saying in like the recommended so far year two of that prom judge is in what we would be looking at is if there was a need for an additional judge we would be bringing forward another prom judge

and then then um I'm not going to say buying judges because we're not really buying the judges but funding the position of a judge you can now do in two-year increments. Gotcha. But it's it's a prom versus you know the full time. I think my piece was just making sure we know what specifically is not going to happen as we come back to a balanced budget. That's correct. We will give you the all the the whole ins and outs. And then

also for those unmet needs, we'll show you what the directors asked for the full 27 million plus. And we're roughly at 9 million, 5 million ongoing and four million one time. that will show you currently in the numbers when you see them on the 17th. And I'll also note that, and I'm getting in the weeds here, so just pull me back out when you're ready. The fact that you established last year a general fund, capital fund for the first time in living memory. And then we're seing that with another right now $8 million this year unless it gets cut. Right. A lot of the unmet needs that the directors are used to saying, I have to ask for this unmet need every year become funded under the general fund capital fund. So it's it's it's um it's a tool that will make as we build that up give us the the ability so that those two little $200 million becomes 250 at some point. And actually we have the money to do certain things that currently we just have to go to the voters every time. Any other questions or comments, observations?

Kind of sad we didn't. Uh, next time we do the loaria. So that 36 is 26 is 28. If we didn't do if we did no one times spend, that's 27. Oh, 27. Oh, the $36 million deficit is 28 if we did no one time when that needs to go. Um, the amount of currently one time and planning in the 27 is an additional $47 million.

So, there's all right. So we have 47 that we're not spending or spending in 27 47 that we're spending that is one time that is one time out of the GF correct including reserves all of this excludes reserves excludes except the 36 reserves would have to cover the 36

if we did not balance the budget which I don't think we can legally do um the reserves would have to cover the 36 But on all ongoing money, see what? Okay. So for all all ongoing money, it sounds like we have we for what we know we have to put into 28, we have 11 extra for 27. No. If we budget 27 as I described with the 36 million and somehow we just painted that with reserve, we're showing a negative $67 million in 28 going into a budget year that also has a structural deficit.

Okay, we can't do that. That's correct. Mhm. Mhm. And in fairness to everyone that is not seeing what you're seeing, I think that it would be best if we continue the conversation in in terms of the numbers and and how to get to or we need to get correct another day. But did you want to add anything else to the budget 101 or any of your assistant city managers? The the thing I'll add is on the third

you'll see the benefits recommendation. The benefits committee has made their recommendation to me. I am preparing my recommendation to you. Actually, that will come out later this week as part of agenda materials. Um, you could act on it on the 3 or you could act on it on the 17th. Depends on your level of comfort with what we recommend. I need it by the 17th so we can do open enrollment in May. Ah okay.

Um I think you'll be pleased with what is coming forward. U because we ran uh the RFP for health benefits and because we are experiencing significant savings. Um then that allows us to preserve quite a bit of all the the plan design except on the network. We are recommending a lot on the network and it preserves um the the employees from having to absorb significant premium increases. The HSA basically would be no increase. Okay. Excellent.

Um and then we'll keep working the pro work it with you. So you're you're still a month and a half almost two months from my recommended budget. So, we still got what? Two months and a pile of monopoly money. Did any did any of you want to add anything? Okay, that's what we have. All righty. Any questions from my colleagues?

All righty. So, we move on to item six. It's a summary of discussion by the mayor. I mean uh I think I thank you all first and foremost for your time. I know that you're super busy. You have uh lots of work to do in your um in your district and also on a personal level. So I really appreciate you all making time for this. I hope that you found it productive and uh what I've asked the city manager to do is to prepare a report on the input. Uh I think it's a good idea for all of us to share our questionnaire responses. So in we're going to provide a memo kind of uh discussing um a summary of our discussion in writing and then we're going to also share the questionnaire uh responses for all of your offices so you can see and you can compare and you know I I think that it could create some additional uh partnerships amongst all of us to bring to the table as a study session item. I think that um really it's about bringing to the table um continued ideas about how do we continue improving and moving forward as a city. Again, like I said at the beginning, we have done a lot of amazing work. And I think one of the most important issues that we need to or challenges that we have in front of us that we need to work on as an

organization is how do we inform the community of all the work that we are doing. Um, I want to pull my hair out when people tell me like the city's not doing anything about unsheltered homelessness. Uh, or the city's not doing anything about, you know, um, transit safety. Uh, those are things that we're investing a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of resources in um in human resources. And so I think one of the biggest challenges that we really have to uh tackle that might not cost any money is how do we inform the community of the work we're doing already. Um that transparency and um information sharing with the community uh sets all of us up to to be in a good place. So for me, I just wanted to thank you. Thank you for your time. Uh thank you for your continued partnership. I truly truly truly do say how lucky I am especially around mayors um throughout the country and what a good partnership I have with my council colleagues. Uh some mayors do not enjoy this um you know uh willingness to work with each other and people that are on the same page. We might not be 100% always in agreement, but that's okay. We always are respectful with each other. We're always um you know teaching each other new things. And so I'm excited about all the input that you gave me and the city manager and looking forward to our

continued work as we enter a really hard budget season. Um, and hopefully we will make sure that we inform the community of what is possible. This budget 101, I think you should take this show on the road, Mr. manager um to explain to the community about really what what type of money we have available through the general fund. We also have to make sure that we are looking out for how the federal government or the state government is affecting our budgets are affecting um you know our ability to govern based on what the community wants us to do. because there are some crazy bills coming out of the state legislature that could highly affect how we do business in the city of Tucson, even how we conduct elections in the city of Tucson. So, we'll be on the lookout for that and uh what the federal government also is doing because any cuts in our community development block grant in our housing and urban development money, any changes or cuts to that could uh worsen unsheltered homelessness, mental behavioral health people that need help that are on our streets. Um, so I'm staying hopeful and I thank you all for um for coming together. I see a recurring recurring themes right that that you all talked about economic development and doing it right with our resources in mind. Uh investments in our roads and infrastructure, parks, investments, um resilience, right? neighborhood resilience and investments there, but

also climate resiliency and continued investment in um you know in our in our sustainability as a city. So, thank you. I'm looking forward to this year with you all and looking forward for additional additional work. I want to share little cards that were in your hair. She did.

Oh, dear. uh that it was really kind of um Charlene's mom to put together for us. So, she spent a little bit of time putting them together. It's cards that say together is better. Oh, so I'll I'll hand some over there, three over there, and three over here. Please choose yours. Thank you so much for making time. Really appreciate you all. Mayor, are we

the Honorable George Cunningham. We got the physical copies here and I wanted to make sure that I made them available for you. Can I read it? Yeah. Okay. So, State of Arizona House of Representatives. Tell everybody. Yes. This was h this happened at the capital and the state and uh the state house and senate stood concurrently for one for a moment of silence for this what they read

and they are four copies for your family. So, state of Arizona House of Representatives, 57th Legislature, 7 second regular session 2026, House Concurrent Resolution60, a concurrent resolution on the death of the Honorable George Cunningham. The Honorable George Cunningham, dedicated former lawmaker and University of Arizona vice president, passed away on May 6, 2025 at the age of 80. Born in 1945 in Nshawa, New Hampshire, George was raised as a Boston Red Sox and Celtics fan. At 11 years of age, George and his family moved to Tucson. He attended Catalina High School where he served as senior class president and ran cross country. He graduated from the University of Arizona where he met the love of his life, Marjgerie. They married in 1969 and remained in Tucson. George Cunningham created a legacy of diligence and purpose, beginning his work in public service early. George was an Army reservist and an assistant city manager of South Tucson while attending graduate school at the University of Arizona. He later worked for the Arizona State Senate where he served as special assistant to the Senate President. He went on to serve his beloved University of Arizona, working in various administrative and financial capacities, including vice president for administrative services, associate vice president, and director of planning and budgeting. As vice president, he managed various aspects of the learning environment, such as managing residential life and ensuring that the roads on campus were paved. In 1988, George became the chief of staff for Governor Rose Maford. He

returned to the University of Arizona from 1990 to 1993 and helped form an international partnership with the Italian government to build the world's largest and most powerful telescope. He also worked on special assignments for the university's president on economic development initiatives. After his years of service there, he decided to run for office. In 1993, he became a member of the Arizona House of Representatives where he served in Democratic leadership. And in 1997, he moved to let me see um the Arizona State Senate where he served until 2001. Throughout his legislative service, George focused on fiscal policy, economic expansion, and investing in Arizona's future. He was recognized by his legislative colleagues and business, labor, and community leaders as an effective and knowledgeable legislator who worked to build bipartisan coalitions. Continuing his service to the people of Arizona, George Cunningham served as Governor Janet Napoleano's budget director in her two terms. During that time, he also co co-founded the Grand Canyon Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that provides fact-based research and education to lawmakers and the public on policies that affect the economic, social, and fiscal future of the state. Known to have a great sense of humor and compassionate nature, George was a committed public servant to the public of Arizona and his hometown of Tucson. He often erased partisan lines for the benefit of his constituents. A natural-born leader, George was a trusted adviser to generations of elected officials. He loved restoring old cars with his many

friends, traveling with his wife, and spending time with his grandchildren. After retirement, George also used his time and energy to volunteer for multiple committees dedicated to improving the quality of life for all Arizonans. A loving husband, father, and grandfather. George Cunningham is survived by his wife of 55 years, Marjgerie. His children, Paul Cunningham and Alisa, Evie Cunningham, uh, Vidler,

Svidler and Joe, Molly, Carrie and Joe, and his grandchildren, Joe, Kyle, Ben, Sophia, Alex, Lud, Brady, Lily, and Susie. Therefore, be it resolved by the House of Representatives of the state of Arizona, the Senate concurring that the members of the legislature express sincere regret at the passing of the Honorable George Cunningham and extend their deepest condolences to his surviving family members. Congratulations.

Thank you. And I think thank you so much, Tim, for handing me this. I appreciate it. And this is for the family. With that, uh, I think item seven is adjournmented. Council will stand adjourned. The next regularly scheduled meeting will be on Tuesday, March 3rd, at or after 5:30 p.m. Thank you everyone. We appreciate you $200 million here.