Farley Brings Remarkable Innovations to Transit, Education & Healthcare to Tucson

Tucson mayoral candidate Steve Farley called for novel approaches to public transit, climate change, the economy, education, healthcare, and gentrification, speaking at a recent meeting of Democrats of Greater Tucson.

“Let’s keep Tucson weird and prosperous,” he says. “I’m an artist. I use both sides of my brain. I know we can get this done. I don’t accept that there is no solution.”

Farley is building on his record of helping build the modern streetcar, expanding Medicaid to 400,000 Arizonans, and helping the RedForEd movement get a 20% pay increase for teachers. The former state Senator was in the state legislature for 12 years.

Solar-powered buses. “Let’s power Sun Tran with the sun to reduce the carbons from the transit system. There are now are public buses with batteries that can run 1,000 miles without a charge,” he says. The idea will cut fossil fuel use, mitigate climate change, reduce bus maintenance and fuel costs and feature quieter, cleaner buses.

Transportation is now the largest source of emissions and smog.

Solar buses are battery electric buses or hybrid buses equipped with batteries which are recharged from solar (or other) power sources. In the US, a solar-powered shuttle bus, the Solar Buzz, operates in New Mexico. Solar-powered buses are also in operation in Australia, China, Germany, the UK, and Uganda. More common are electric rechargeable electric buses, which 13% of US transit agencies use.

Create a public option for municipal healthcare. “Healthcare is still a struggle for too many Tucsonans,” Farley says. “Tucson can serve as a model for the rest of the nation by offering a public healthcare option, starting with small businesses and sole proprietors.”

The idea is the same as trade association health insurance plans that allow members to buy in. Farley asserts that the city can self-fund the city employee health plan and hire a third-party administrator, saving up to $70 million annually. The city can open the health plan to city residents who would get better coverage with lower premiums.

The benefits include keeping the community healthy, supporting the small business economy, and encouraging entrepreneurs to move into the city limits, and create more jobs.

Convert empty storefronts and vacant land into urban villages. “Big box stores closing down because the retail economy is changing. We can look at them as an opportunity for mixed-use development, with businesses and child care where people can live and work at the same time. You create urban villages connected to the transit system,” he says.

He says the depressed area at the Grant and Alvernon intersection “is the poster child for economic decline. Circle K couldn’t even survive there.” However the area has good transit, is near the Botanical Gardens and has many migrants living in nearby apartments. “We could turn the Fry’s parking lot into farmland, managed by the Botanical Garden and worked by refugees who live in the neighborhood,” he says. “We could turn the Walgreens into a library with computer labs and job training. We will come up with a culture of solutions with the resources we have available.”

Supporting education. “Too often I’ve heard that city doesn’t have a role in education. If the state won’t support our education, we must fill in here in the city. We have a very high poverty rate here. The best way we’ve invented to lift people out of poverty is high-quality public education.”

• Universal pre-school. Farley supports the Pima County Preschool Investment Proposal, which would provide scholarships for 12,000 high-quality preschool placements for 3- and 4-year-old children in Pima County. Farley says that the idea can be funded by social impact bonds, which encourage private investment in positive social outcomes. Economic savings produced by the program are repaid to the investors.
• “Community schools.” The idea is to use public schools as a platform to fight poverty. It would benefit families, not just the kids, by offering GED classes, basic healthcare, low-income bus passes, use of the computer lab, career counseling, microlending, and job training for parents. The concept is already working in the Flowing Wells School District, headed by Superintendent David Baker.
• Education of prisoners. “As Mayor, I will work with Pima County and Pima Community College to convert a wing of the Pima County Jail into a branch of Pima Community College,” he says. The program will offer job training and general education classes to nonviolent inmates and the general public in mixed classes. As prison populations decrease, we can transfer funds from incarcerating people to educating people, easing readjustment and reducing the chances those prisoners will ever offend again.”

Slowing gentrification. Farley proposed renovating aging houses on the south and east side through job training. “These houses were built 60 years ago and need retrofitting insulation and reducing their carbon emissions. They are reaching the end of their lifespan,” he says.

Farley says he’ll work with Pima Community College, building trades unions, builders, and JTED programs to create a new job-training program. Apprentices will learn their skills by fixing up the homes of people who can’t afford the repairs otherwise, especially seniors living on their own. As part of this program, solar hot water heaters and increased insulation can reduce utility bills and use of fossil fuels that emit carbons.

Benefits include lower utility bills, helping seniors stay in their homes, mitigating climate change and providing paths out of poverty — and solving a worker shortage in construction.

All of these remarkable innovations are outlined on Farley’s website. He has met voters in an up-close and personal campaign of walking the 16.5-mile length of Speedway, and riding the No. 8 Broadway bus and asking voters, “what would you do as mayor?”

“When I’m mayor, I’ll still be taking the bus, so that if you want to talk to the mayor, just take the Broadway bus. I’ll be the mayor for everybody,” he says.