Tucson Weekly: The Skinny (October 23

Skinny FARE GAME: The law mandates that municipalities receiving federal mass-transit aid must allow their transit system employees the right to strike. But the City of Tucson doesn't allow its employees this basic human right; and so, in order to receive those all-important federal dollars, the city currently employs an out-of-state management company, Ryder/ATE, to create an artificial division between itself and SunTran employees.
It's a ridiculous situation made worse by the fact that city Department of Transportation bureaucrats are constantly fiddling with the bus company behind the scenes, thus creating what appears, to our suspicious minds at least, to be a festering pustule on the body politic.
For example:
• For a number of years now, the City of Tucson has not required an annual performance audit of Ryder/ATE, a clear violation of its management contract. This fact alone is simply inexcusable and should be grounds for dismissal and/or recall of the city officials responsible.
• Ryder/ATE's last bid on the managerial contract was $17,500 higher than its final bid--in a sealed-bid process. How did that happen? And notwithstanding the fact that it was the high bidder, city officials renewed the company's contract--even in the absence of the required performance audits.
Furthermore, evidence exists to indicate:
• Ryder/ATE's purchasing procedures have been altered to suit a politically influential city official.
• Grant monies have shifted to cover items they were never meant for.
• Inventory "losses" have been covered by "computer crashes," effectively removing all accountability.
In that increasingly clueless rag, the Tucson Citizen, an October 2 page one article reported city transportation officials were praising Ryder/ATE for its "cost-effective" management. Yeah, and what that really means is:
• Staffing levels are not maintained to keep up with fleet growth.
• There is no follow-through on long-range planning, and there's currently no contingency fleet that would allow buses to be held idle for maintenance and repairs.
• Scheduled maintenance for buses is nonexistent. The buses are simply allowed to run until they break down.
• Ryder/ATE has an antiquated inventory system, with no controls, or controls that vary so much as to be useless--at least to honest SunTran employees.
• Mechanics receive little or no training on "high-tech" systems.
• The company buys low-grade fuel, thus creating more air pollution at a time when clean air is supposed to be a priority. Ryder/ATE's use of cheap fuel is also shortening bus engines' life spans.
• The company mixes engine oils, also shortening engines life spans.
• Rather than spending money on upgrades, Ryder/ATE is allowing natural gas buses to run permanently in "diesel-only" mode, thus producing more air pollution.
Ryder/ATE is far from "cost-effective." Rather, it's cheap and irresponsible.
And for this sort of performance, local taxpayers shell out roughly $360,000 a year. These are our tax dollars, and we should demand accountability.
HE WHO SMELT IT, DEALT IT: The founding white guys, in their infinite wisdom, eventually realized free speech is absolutely essential to the life of our democratic republic, much like the ability to fart is absolutely essential to the life of any living organism.
Better to experience the occasional small explosion between the legs, they might have reasoned, than to suffer increasing discomfort and a stupendous, flaming detonation somewhere down the line. Hence, the First Amendment, which is meant to encourage gaseous emissions from one and all.
One such emission occurred last week, and Tucson Mayor George Miller, like some idiotic Chicken Little, promptly called in the Tucson Police Department. We're referring, of course, to the flap over those goofy anti-Proposition 201 mailers, which vaguely resembled an official document the city would send out at election time. Odd, isn't it, that TPD would respond to someone farting in the crazy soupbowl of public politics when its officers can't even be bothered these days to investigate traffic accidents and residential burglaries? Can you say "budding neo-fascist police state?"
At least the state Attorney General's Office had the good sense to point out the mailer was perfectly legal. But that only prompted the TPD Political Police to report the matter to the U.S. postal authorities. A good Nazi is a persistent Nazi, as dear old Uncle Adolph used to say.
Tom Beal, currently serving a life sentence as a columnist for The Arizona Daily Star, offered the typical cementhead response to these mailers. He called the perpetrators, Terry Pollock and Rich Wiersma of Citizens Voice to Restore and Replenish Quality Water, "clever liars and manipulators of public emotions."
This implies, of course, that the other side is not full of lying and manipulating scumbags.
In this particular case, we certainly don't believe Growth Lobby forces were counting on their heavy saturation advertising to influence absentee voters, most of whom do the deed much earlier than those of us who trudge to the polls in November. And, gee, wasn't it just too bad city bureaucrats failed to send out the official election publicity pamphlet in time to reach some of those early voters--that couldn't have been an attempt at manipulation, could it? The fact that some of those absentee voters couldn't even get a copy of Proposition 201 itself before voting was probably due to some minor oversight.
Nor could the Star's generally namby-pamby coverage of water politics over the years be due to anything but simple incompetence--right? (We'd be remiss here if we failed to praise a notable exception, namely Star reporter Keith Bagwell's front-page story of October 17, which actually did an excellent job of pointing out a few of the major problems with 201 and noting the forces of hell-bent-for-leather growth behind it, such as Diamond Ventures. Good luck finding another job, Keith.) And Prop 201 itself certainly couldn't be a sinister attempt by the Growth Lobby to seize control of Tucson's water supply--that clause calling for an unelected "citizens'" oversight committee is just there for our protection, and never mind that everything in 201--except that oversight committee--is already mandated by law.
No siree, all those pool builders, developers and land speculators who've been financing Proposition 201 have only our best interests at heart. And it's just a coincidence, isn't it, that heavy-duty Prop 201 supporter Buck O'Rielly has been running those big O'Rielly Chevrolet ads in the Star recently?
Yep, those pro-201 people, including the fatcats controlling The Arizona Daily Star's editorial page, are way above lying and manipulating in order to lock in that 100-year assurance of a water supply so necessary to further uncontrolled growth in this valley.
So, golly, Beal is right to condemn Pollock and Wiersma's little free-speech fart attack. It was such an impolite thing to do in front of all those high-and-mighty community "leaders."
Oh, by the way, nice haircut, prisoner Beal.
CANCER IS GOOD FOR THE ECONOMY, TOO: And did you catch the Star's long-winded pro-201 piece the following Sunday, October 19?
Hey, Red Star folks: Why not save the ink and just order people to drink that CAP crap? Because that's what your overlong editorial boils down to: We're all supposed to drink that gunk because, if we do, it'll help Tucson grow and grow and grow.
What's next, pro-cancer editorials?
The Pro 201 Growth Lobby would have us believe we'll lose our CAPallotment to Las Vegas if we don't pass Prop 201--and then they turn around and accuse Prop 201 opponents of "deceptive" advertising. No one's going to steal our water as long as we start using it--and it's past time the City Council quit putzing around and started putting the water in the ground, as the voters demanded just two years ago.
THE DUMBING DOWN OF LOCAL NEWS: The 10 o'clock segment of the Tuesday, October 15, KOLD-TV, Channel 13, news provided a classic example of just how bad things have gotten in local TV "journalism."
One of KOLD's news children was attempting to report on the Amphi School District's pygmy owl controversy, specifically the suit recently filed by former Pima County Supervisor David Yetman against the district.
It was obviously a subject she barely grasped, because her report was, to put it kindly, gibberish. She spoke in incomplete sentences and mumbled something about "conflicting interests," and never got around to telling us who filed the suit or what it contained. She clearly didn't have a clue, and she received little assistance from anchor/model du jour Chris Pickel.
We're not naming the reporter in this inept display because we don't really think it's her fault. Frankly, we feel sorry for her. It's clear she's not expected to know anything--like what a conflict of interest is. The fault lies with station management and Channel 13's news director, who continually allow these embarrassments on the public airwaves.
SORE LOSERS: Normally we don't speak ill of the deceased, but defeated Ward 3 Democratic City Councilman Michael Crawford just doesn't get it, nor does his about-to-be-unemployed aide, Ted Abrams. Both whine and babble at every talk show and newspaper opportunity about how they were screwed in an election where they had every advantage.
Crawford had a lot more money than the winner, Jerry Anderson. Crawford also had the endorsement of both daily papers. As an incumbent in the primary election, Crawford had three opponents--an ideal tactical situation. And yet he blew it; and since his defeat he's been whining it was all because of the nasty things the Tucson Weekly said about him.
While we'd love to take credit for Crawford's political demise, there are several additional factors he's too arrogant and dumb to recognize. While he claimed to have provided great constituent service, it's clear his constituents didn't think so. The fact that his staff consisted of arrogant, yuppie lawyers who pissed people off has yet to occur to him. And nobody we've talked to liked his ugly propensity to keep his nose firmly implanted up Mayor George Miller's ass. Add those factors to his dumb and ineffective campaign, and you've got a self-inflicted political disaster.
The fact he and Abrams now whine about The Weekly's "unfair" coverage--which basically consisted of going beyond the bullshit handouts Crawford gave us and the phony claims he made--indicates that neither of them learned anything from their first political ass whumpin'. Grow up, boys.
AND FINALLY, SOME GOOD NEWS: El Pueblo Clinic, one of Tucson's oldest established resources for medical assistance to the poor, was recently harshly criticized by former board members for "division, nepotism and cronyism" (See "A Sick Situation," Tucson Weekly, August 21).
We're happy to report the clinic's directors at least seem to be working to clean up the mess. The current administration, under the guidance of Hector Morales, has unified a politically divided board of directors, paved the way for an infusion of $250,000 in county and state money to help victims of TCE-polluted drinking water, hired an interim medical director as well as an accountant, and established a payment plan to cover bills from Kino Community Hospital.
Morale is reportedly on the upswing at El Pueblo, and we hope it continues. The clinic is simply too important to Tucson's poor to let slide back into the morass of politics.

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