Tucson Weekly: The Skinny (December 4

A LOYAL READER WRITES:
Oh mighty Skinny,
Skinny Please help us desperate Tucson Citizen staffers in our hour of need. Morale is sinking and our people are abandoning ship. Our latest casualty is Norma Coile, one of our best and most effective editors, who is going to The Arizona Daily Star.
The reason for the unrest: Michael Limon, the foul-mouthed, homeboy wannabe, control freak who replaced Ricardo Pimentel as managing editor. His obsessive micromanaging and constant second-guessing of his underlings' decisions are driving people over the edge.
After disrespecting Norma one too many times, she finally said enough is enough. She announced her departure a week after graphic artist Sue Celaya announced her resignation. Although the main reason Sue quit was because her husband got a job in Phoenix, she said she also left because of Limon. Her primary complaint was that he would tear out graphics from the Arizona Republic and her ask her to copy them for our paper, without any attribution, a practice known as plagiarism.
Some staffers have complained to editor Don Hatfield about Limon, and he met with them last week to discuss the situation. Unfortunately, he also asked Limon to sit in, which intimidated the other editors, who didn't want to say anything negative about their boss to his face.
Hatfield and Gannett, Inc. just don't get it. How many more people have to quit before they see some kind of pattern? Will Limon become the next John Silva? Please help us, oh great and powerful Skinny, by getting the word out about this clown. Maybe then Hatfield will get a clue.
Thanks.
BUS RIDE TO NOWHERE: The City of Tucson apparently views public transportation as the goose that lays its golden eggs, because it regularly siphons off federal, state, county and local tax dollars earmarked for that function into its general fund, leaving the crumbs to fund an increasingly ratty transit system.
Furthermore, the city employs an out-of-state management company, Ryder/ATE, to create an artificial division between SunTran and City of Tucson employee wages and benefits--partially so that the city can get federal transportation funds (which are denied to organizations whose workers cannot strike, as is the case in the City of Tucson), but also to keep SunTran wages lower than those of other comparable city service workers.
Ryder/ATE and Tucson Department of Transportation officials have run things their own way for years, but the transit strike this past August brought new attention to the whole sordid operation. One amusing factoid that came to light during the strike: According to the National Transit Database, an official document of the Federal Transit Administration, the chief executive officer for the City of Tucson mass transit system (SunTran) is, in fact, the City Manager. Gee, we guess all those denials of official city responsibility during the strike were just pure bull-puckie meant to distract the masses.
What's more, Ryder/ATE has another lucrative city contract to oversee maintenance of the handicapped transportation service known as VanTran. Ryder/ATE has held this contract since 1989, due perhaps in large part to the fact that the city review committee which oversees the bid-selection process consists of select members of the city Transportation Department. The Star Chamber is alive and well, and it's also controlling oversight of SunTran contracts, too.
This close-knit group of city bureaucrats appears to be controlling the selection processes of prospective applicants within their own, as well as the SunTran and VanTran administrations. This apparent loss of control by the City Council, the policy makers in our democratic community, has already led to governmental abuses of our tax dollars within Tucson's mass-transit morass. But don't count on the audit of the bus company now in progress to uncover all of the shady and shabby practices--insiders say it's likely going to be a puff job.
And it's certainly outside the scope of the auditors' duties to investigate the increasing complaints we hear of Ryder/ATE's alleged management by intimidation and exploitation. That, we believe, should be the City Manager's job.
At the very least, Tucson's City Council must honor its commitments to SunTran employees and keep the issue of their fair compensation as a top priority in discussions of the 1998-'99 budget.
PARTY FAVORS: Newly elected Tucson City Councilman Fred Ronstadt faces several major decisions over the next few months. One of the most difficult for him will be whether to support election by ward for the Council. Ronstadt's Republican party has clamored for this change for years, and recently Mayor George Miller declared his support in his obsessive drive to swallow the Catalina Foothills and the Casas Adobes areas. But Ronstadt represents a heavily Democratic ward dominated by liberals who supported Democrat Alison Hughes in the general election.
So: Will Fred support ward-only elections, knowing it could cost him his Council seat?
COWABUNGA! There's an obscene scam run on the taxpayers of Arizona known colloquially as "rent-a-cow." It works like this:
Land used for agricultural purposes like farming and ranching is taxed at a lower rate than other land. In fact, it's barely taxed at all. Example: A 2,675-acre parcel in Oro Valley has an annual tax bill of $670 because it has a few cows running on it.
One can argue the benefits to the state of subsidizing agriculture in the first place, but here's the real rub. That 2,675 acres is owned by Rancho Vistoso and has already been rezoned for thousands of homes. The cows come from an outfit in Willcox which has a grazing lease with the developers. Part of the area the cattle roam is Honeybee Canyon, and everyone concedes the critters are doing great damage to this riparian area.
Oro Valley Planning Director Don Chatfield noticed there's no provision in the town's code for a grazing use and tried to outlaw the cows. Only problem: That would've put all that rezoned acreage on the tax rolls at its real value and cost Vistoso Partners as much as a million or more bucks a year in property taxes to a bunch of jurisdictions, including the Amphitheater School District and Pima County. So Chatfield listened to the developers, it was reported elsewhere, when they appealed his decision based on the grounds that the land had always been used for cattle grazing.
What really happened is that Chatfield was leaned on by his pro-developer boss, Town Manager Chuck Sweet, and the development stooges on the Oro Valley Council. The logic that cattle were always there doesn't prevent Oro Valley from stopping them.
On the positive side, they did cut a deal to keep the cows out of most of Honeybee, and the developer promises to build a "wildlife-friendly" fence and will now pay real taxes on a small portion of that rezoned land.
But the shameful development subsidy that allows owners of rezoned land to skate on property taxes by running a few head of cattle is common all over this valley, from Vistoso to Rocking K to most of Marana, and costs local jurisdictions millions each year in taxes. Because of this loophole, the rest of us pay for the costs of the development these "ranchers" create. We hope Oro Valley taxpayers remember that next election.
MEANWHILE, NEXT DOOR IN TORTOLITA: Arizona Attorney General Grant Woods is suing to disincorporate the Town of Tortolita on the grounds that it isn't a real community, and that it's "rural" and "agricultural" in nature. Woods, stooging for the Growth Lobby, whose members actually drew up the suit, has even alleged--get this--that Tortolita shouldn't be allowed to exist because of the attitude its residents have towards growth!
The irony in this is choice: Literally across the street from Tortolita Mayor Lan Lester's home (which is the current town hall) are Oro Valley and Rancho Vistoso--both home to grazing, tax-break-inducing cows. Tortolita, on the other hand, has no such agricultural usages.
Oro Valley is still trying to annex huge hunks of Tortolita, and has the public support of the Amphi School District, whose officials like the way Oro Valley does business. Amphi officials want their school district in a town that shares their outlook on growth and development.
SOMETIMES, A POL PLEASANTLY SURPRISES US: We figured GOP Corporation Commissioner Jim Irvin as a sure patsy for the utility companies he's supposed to oversee, and he began his term by proving it. He voted with fellow Republican--and utility stooge--Carl Kunasek to make Kunasek chairman of the commission while canning most of the staff, leaving the third commissioner, Democrat Renz Jennings, Jr., holding the bag.
But Irvin has apparently gotten his act together and done something worth mentioning--namely pissing off Kunasek. He and Jennings have teamed up and dumped Kunasek as chair. (He resigned, but we know what would have happened if he hadn't.) Then the new bi-partisan majority rehired the Commission's former chief legal counsel, Paul Bullis, and canned Kunasek's person, Lindy Funkhouser.
It's really nice to see somebody turn on them for a change.

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