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Broadway Coalition Calls for Sustainable Expansion that Protects Businesses & History

March 9, 2015 by Pamela Powers

The Broadway Coalition, a tireless group of Tucsonans who has been calling for reasoned expansion of Broadway Blvd., has issued an urgent call to action. If you don’t want to waste money on yet another unnecessary, unaffordable, and destructive road widening project, you need to speak up NOW– before Wednesday, March 11, 2015. (Details below.)

You can also learn more at tonight’s Sustainable Tucson which features the Broadway Coalition’s vision. (Details here and below.)

The proposed Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) Plan calls for widening Broadway from downtown to Country Club Road. The original suggestions were based on growth projections from the 1980s. Unfortunately– or fortunately, depending upon your point of view– Tucson didn’t grow East. It grew North. (Background here.)

Tucson’s needs don’t match the old growth projections. Developers and people who will make money knocking down and rebuilding businesses along Broadway or make money on the road construction, want to go blindly forth on yet another unnecessary road widening project. The Grant Road widening will happen in the future; 22nd Street was just expanded and improved; and the Aviation Parkway is also available as a speedy East-West route from downtown.

With these three improved thoroughfares, why do we need a fourth? Why destroy our historic buildings to make way for more chain stores and strip malls? Why destroy thriving local businesses along Broadway to make way for a road project we don’t need? Enough crony capitalism already.

As mentioned above, shit is getting real now. The latest round of public comment ENDS MARCH 11 (Wednesday). Please read the call to action, and act!

From Broadway Coalition…

CALL TO ACTION

After 3 long years we are at thecritical point of the Broadway Project. This project affects all of us in our community and sets the direction for transportation decisions for years to come. The proposed alignment would wipe out at least 37 businesses and homes, including most of the structures on the north side of Broadway between Campbell and Park! This threatens the Rincon Heights Historic District. We can significantly and creatively improve Broadway without this kind of destructive widening, wasting tens of millions of dollars, decreasing support for transit and other forms of travel. An entire small business sector will be affected.We, that is, YOU, can make a valuable difference now. It will take you about 1 minute. There is a public comment period open now, but it will close March 11th. Doing just one (or maybe all) of the following is critical…

Bishop Kicanas Calls for Community Meeting on Homelessness

March 9, 2015March 9, 2015 by Pamela Powers

Bishop Kicanas of the Diocese of Tucson has called for a second public meeting to discuss homeless in Tucson. Here is the information about tomorrow’s meeting.

Background information…

Tuesday, March 10 at 11:00 a.m.

TEP building, 88 E. Broadway between 6th and Scott Avenues

second-floor conference room (entrance faces Broadway near west end of building)

This meeting has been scheduled at the request of Bishop Kicanas of the Diocese of Tucson. This is a second meeting– according to Tucson News Now,

The Catholic diocese organized a meeting to discuss the growing homeless population downtown, on Monday afternoon [March 2].

The meeting included city and county leaders, business owners, and leaders from many non-profit groups in Tucson who work with the homeless.

In an interview with Tucson News Now after the meeting, Bishop Gerald Kicanas called on Tucson residents to be compassionate, as the city worked to find a long term solution to address the needs of the homeless, and find a solution that would help business owners who were frustrated with the problem.

The Downtown Tucson Partnership is helping to spread the word. According to DTP executive director Michael Keith, who is involved in developing a program for the meeting, the bishop wishes to “maintain the momentum” of the March 2 meeting as well as other community discussions looking to “move past the Occupy Safe Park issue and begin to look for meaningful strategies to address homelessness across Tucson.”

Keith said Peggy Hutchison, CEO of Primavera Foundation, will present information on the current local situation, and Michele Ream of Community Supported Shelters will share her presentation on scattered-site microhousing efforts in other areas and other “best practices.” The Mayor and Council’s action on March 3 (see below) and the Denver urban camping ordinance will likely be subjects of discussion.

The following is from the action summary of the March 3 Mayor & Council study session (http://www.tucsonaz.gov/sirepub/mtgviewer.aspx?meetid=1358&doctype=SUMMARY):

Tucsonans Take to the Streets to Protest Ducey/GOP Budget

March 6, 2015 by Pamela Powers

More than 1000 people rallied at the Arizona Capitol to protest cuts to education on Thursday. The Phoenix rally spawned a similar protest in Tucson, where 100 people protested millions of dollars in cuts to K-12 education, $104 million in cuts to universities, and elimination of funding for Pima Community College and other community colleges in Pinal and Maricopa County.

Tucson education rally — Governor Ducey had proposed increasing prison beds and funding, while cutting education. Protesters took issue with that short-sighted idea.

ICYMI, Governor Doug Ducey and Republicans in the Arizona Legislature cooked up a terrible budget deal in secret, announced it on Wednesday, and tried to ram it through both houses before the public knew what hit them (literally). Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, and the blogs– Arizonans quickly organized against Ducey’s budget plan.

You’ll remember that Ducey and the Legislature are facing a budget deficit of nearly half a billion dollars this year and over $1 billion next year, AND, thanks to Tooth Fairy Math, they believe that that can balance the budget, give millions of dollars in corporate tax cuts, and do nothing to raise revenue (to pay down the deficit or to make the tax cuts ~~seem less ridiculous~~ affordable.)

Parents, teachers, school board members, public education supporters, and students from 5 to 25 years old showed up in force in the two cities to tell the governor that balancing the state budget– yet again— on the backs of students and families is unacceptable. At this time, Ducey doesn’t have the votes in either chamber of the Legislature to pass his budget. Images from the Tucson rally after the jump.

Tucson: It’s Time to Stop Ignoring the Homeless & Help Them (video)

February 21, 2015 by Pamela Powers

For decades, Tucson has waffled between ignoring the homeless living on our streets and under bridges to over-policing them.

When I moved here in 1981, the politically correct term for Tucson’s homeless was “transient”.

The attitude was: They’re not ‘homeless’, and they’re not ‘bums’. They’re just passing through… transient. Ignore them, and they’ll go away.

Transients were seen by the populace and the local government as another inconvenient byproduct of warm winter weather. They’re like snowbirds and college students but without money, but our capitalistic society has no use for people without money.

By labeling the homeless “transients”, Tucson was able to turn a blind eye toward them. Over the years, Tucson tried to make itself more inhospitable by passing laws prohibiting aggressive panhandling and ending street corner sales of newspapers. Really… we just wanted them to go away, so we wouldn’t have to feel guilty about inaction. With the rise of Safe Park homeless encampment downtown, I fear another round of over-policing is coming, since the city is appealing a court order protecting Safe Park as a free speech protest. For the back story and ideas for the future, keep reading.

Feral Cats to Broadway Widening: Sh*t’s Going Down at City Council Meeting

October 9, 2014October 9, 2014 by Pamela Powers

Hundreds of citizens attended a meeting this summer to review plans to widen Broadway Blvd.

Two hot button issues will be voted on Thursday, Oct. 9, at the Tucson City Council meeting and study session: widening Broadway Blvd. and approving the feral cat spay/neuter policy, adopted by the county.

If you read the Arizona Daily Star, you’d think the big issue of the day is the City Council’s dithering on spending $200,000 to do a catch, spay/neuter, and return-to-the-wild program to control the feral cat population. The Star devoted ~25 column inches in today’s paper to feral cats, including hubris from Republican-turned-Blue-Dog-Dem City Councilman Steve Kozachik repeating his, “we’ll kill the cats” threat aimed at Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry. The paper focused of the city-county tiff of who told what to whom when instead of on whether or not the new program works in city’s where it’s been tested. (Here’s a great story about how well this type of program has worked elsewhere and more information regarding Tucson and Albuquerque programs.)

What you didn’t read about in the Star was the Broadway widening controversy. Prime real estate in the newspaper was devoted a $200,000 spay and neuter program, but there was no coverage on wasting millions to widen a road that doesn’t need to be widened. What’s wrong with this picture? No one will make any money on the cat program; it’s just the right thing to do. But buying up and destroying 19 structures, including some historic buildings, to widen a road based up plans drawn up decades ago– city’s power base wants to side that deal through without further mention because contractors, developers, speculators, and road-widening addicts will make a bundle on that!

In a nutshell, the Broadway Citizens Task Force has proposed a six-lane plan for Broadway Blvd., and the Council will vote on that tonight. The Broadway Coalition, Sustainable Tucson, the Tucson Bus Riders Union, and others who favor sustainable living are against the six-lane plan for multiple reasons. (I don’t see the rationale for widening Broadway when current traffic and future projects don’t warrant it, and when no good rationale is being given to do it. Also, citizens and area businesses are fighting hard against the widening and the destruction of historic buildings.) Tucson’s power players have an addiction to widening roads, and it doesn’t matter how destructive it is to families, businesses, the city budget, or Tucson’s historic sense of place. Broadway will be discussed at 1:30 p.m. study session and the 5 p.m. meeting. Details and links from both groups after the jump.