Tucson Weekly: The Skinny (January 8

Skinny THE BUS MUSS: Ryder/ATE, the company that runs SunTran, our municipal bus system, once again leaves us overtaxed citizen wondering what the heck we're paying 'em for.
With a current annual budget that, all told, amounts to about $40 million (for those who like to go "ooh," that's $40,000,000.00), and with only about $7 million of that being federal money, and figuring an average of $30 million a year since 1978, which totes up to about $590 million over the length of its contract with the City of Tucson, Ryder/ATE has got to be one of the biggest money-making operations in this podunk pueblo.
With that kind of scratch for the past 19 years, Ryder/ATE should have been able to build quite an impressive organization. Instead we get dirty buses and missed runs, with ordinary citizens standing around wondering how they'll get to work. Oh, and pointless, surreal TV commercials. All the while, without regard to the terms of its contract with Ryder/ATE, the city does not require so much as one performance audit in 19 years.
In fiscal 1996-'97, the city retains Ryder/ATE to conduct a comprehensive operational analysis (COA) on SunTran for the sum of $200,000. Pardon us, but we're having a real problem with this one: Our tax dollars were used to pay the company to, in effect, police itself? Yeah, Ryder/ATE subsequently subcontracted out the COA, but of course it was skewed. For one thing, the "on-time" results looked bad, our sources tell us, so they were altered.
Industry standards dictate the COA should be performed three years, so of course Ryder/ATE is hoping for another shot at $200,000-plus in fiscal year 1999-'00. Good luck, kids!
Meanwhile the city fleet has fallen into a state of perpetual disrepair. As of Sunday, December 14, SunTran was running way behind, with 83 so-called "safety and preventative maintenance inspections" left unperformed. We're told the mechanics on duty are laboring under instructions to do only the safety-related repairs (which, when you think about it, should include just about everything on a bus that carries the unsuspecting public). The sad part of it is, this situation is nothing new to SunTran. In fact, in times passed, when inspections were running behind on the entire fleet of about 196 buses, the inspection requirement was merely "rolled over," our sources tell us, meaning they weren't done until the next round.
And there for a while, we're told, simple maintenance was being delayed for so long that engines were failing from oil "breakdown."
It's high time city officials faced the truth: The entire SunTran fleet is suffering from 19 years of Ryder/ATE's misaligned priorities. For example, despite its perpetually failing fleet of buses, from fiscal 1995 to 1997 the company budgeted $865,800 for "administrative remodeling and facility improvements," another $177,000 for current fiscal year as well as a proposed $954,000 for fiscal year 1998-'99. Yeah, nice offices for the top brass will really improve the fucking bus service in this town.
And what's with Ryder/ATE's sudden obsession with security--to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars to install surveillance cameras and wireless security locks with alarms? Are we expecting an invasion, or has the skim simply gotten out of hand?
We've said it before and we'll say it again: It's time for the policymakers in our community to take control and boot Ryder/ATE off the bus.
MORE CRIMINAL CODDLING: Seen on a flight back from Mexico with his family during the Christmas holidays--Governor J. Fife Whiteguy III.
But wait--isn't he a convicted felon? Apparently just sort of. All the convicted felons we know of surrender their passports upon conviction. In fact, most get to head straight for the slammer while the judge ponders sentencing. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
Not so the White Guy. He gets to enjoy his travels in Mexico. Anybody remember that this was the "tough-on-crime" governor always railing against soft judges who wouldn't throw the book at convicted felons? It's like we've been telling you all along: Fife was just another phony pol.
GO FIGURE: It didn't take long for the morning daily to make its first blunder of 1998. On New Year's Day, reporter Rhonda Bodfield had a front-page story revealing that former Tucson mayor Tom Volgy was exploring the possibility of challenging District 5 Congressman Jim Kolbe. The article was accompanied by a sidebar headlined "district facts" that was utterly inaccurate.
In fairness to Bodfield (who recently applied for journalistic asylum at the Star after fleeing the Tucson Citizen), she may not have been responsible for the blunder. According to the sidebar, the district has 28,840 Democrats; 23,249 Republicans; 1,258 Libertarians; and 10,443 others, for a total of 59,790. (Although, oddly, when you add up the Star's breakdown, the total comes out 63,790.) These grossly incorrect numbers were attributed to the office of the Secretary of State.
Obviously, no one on the desk noticed that congressional districts are a tad larger. For the record, the real numbers in CD5: Democrats, 163,592; Republicans, 163,637; Libertarians, 4,616; Reform, 107; others 50,583 for a total of 382,535. Our source--one call to the Secretary of State's Office.
Once upon a time, the daily press actually cared about this stuff.
BUT WHO NEEDS POLITICAL COVERAGE? The Tucson Citizen has moved political writer David Pittman to the business section. Our sources tell us there are no plans to replace him, so it appears they'll follow the lead of their evil-twin TNI sister paper, the Star, and just bumble along without one.
REMAINING RESOLUTE: Residents of Casas Adobes and Tortolita were given the following New Year's advice by the Citizen's editorial bozos: "Resolve to get a clue. It's over. Your cities/towns/villages don't exist. Stop spending money you don't have and won't get."
Never mind that the constitutional issues haven't been resolved. Never mind that their residents chose incorporation, and any expenses will be paid by the property owners of those communities. Never mind that they have a right to defend the decisions of their citizens. And never mind how much tax money has been spent by the State of Arizona and the City of Tucson in attempting to screw them over. The Citizen just tells them to shut up and go away.
How arrogant and stupid.
The decent, law-abiding residents of those two communities have the same right to the judicial appeals process as any convicted governor or common criminal, and they're properly exercising it. And we didn't notice the Citizen or the Star--both a product of out-of-touch, uncaring, out-of-town ownership interests--telling the City of Tucson to pack it in and quit spending money when these towns were victorious at the initial stage of litigation before the Superior Court.
It's the vibrating dildo heads who write those third-rate Citizen editorials who need to get a clue.
BOILER ROOM BOMBAST: There's a boiler room telephone operation calling Tucson residents identified as Citizens Against Incorporation. The pitch is a gloom-and-doom, the-sky-will-fall hit explaining how new communities in this area will destroy Tucson as we know it, and other assorted BS. Our source, a west central resident, pressed the anonymous caller, asking for an address, a return phone number or additional info through the mail, the mystery man simply hung up.
So who's fronting this operation, and what's the purpose? Forest City? Some other big land-owner? And why? After they identify enough anti-incorporation folks, will they then conduct a fake survey using them as the sample group to convince legislators that Tucsonans dramatically oppose any attempt to change incorporation laws?
God, we love the smell of sleaze in the morning.
CORPORATE CRASSITUDE: You're a newsperson working over the holiday. There's a deadline looming. You need to interview 39-year-old Teshome Abate, a murderer in the state corrections system who's claimed his religious rights have been violated and who's gone on a hunger strike. At last report the 5-foot-10 Ethiopian Orthodox Christian weighed 74 pounds and could barely speak. Now he lies near death in St. Mary's Hospital.
You call the hosptial to ask about his current conditon, but they won't tell you a thing. They say call Jan Howard, the public relations person for Corondolet, the company that owns the hospital. They tell you Howard's handling this matter. So you call the pager number they give you.
A few minutes later, Howard calls you back. She's obviously steamed. You say it's a big civil rights issue, and you ask if you can talk to Abate. But Howard says it's her day off, it's a holiday, and besides, she's in the middle of a movie--Shall We Dance--and she doesn't want to deal with this. Besides, she says it's the Department of Corrections' issue. Fine, you say, can I have the number of their contact. Howard says she doesn't have one and she can't do anything.
Yes, public relations is practically a social science these days. They teach it in colleges all across the nation.

Home | Currents | City Week | Music | Review | Books | Cinema | Back Page | Archives