By Joseph Cunnnigham
Photo from The City of Tucson
The city of Tucson asked voters to consider a half-cent sales tax increase for the next 10 years to fund a “safer and more vibrant tucson.” But what exactly does that mean? Where is this money going?
The city divided it up into 5 different categories: affordable housing and shelter, neighborhood and community resilience, enhancing emergency response, technology investments and capital investments for first responders.
The first category centers things such as down-payment assistance for first time buyers, and also low barrier shelter development at around 950,000 per year. As well as community safety staffing.
The next section focuses on community resilience, such as adding the community service officers to the city’s workforce, or community maintenance, such as shade for bus stops, or urban forest maintenance.
While these two areas intrigued Tucsonans, the other sections quickly put them off with the next two being all about first responders. While many agree medical and especially fire, in Tucson’s hot air, deserve more, it would seem that most of the funds diverted into the first responder bracket involving the Tucson Police Department. However it also did include much needed 911 operating staffing.
Technology investments mention TPD getting airsupport at a one time cost of $16,700,000 and then maintenance costs, TPD apparatus, personal protective equipment and TPD patrol vehicles. Suddenly it becomes very easy to say this is all for TPD. Despite this being a step in the right direction, in terms of attempting to implement more help for the city, it is clear due to the landslide results that Tucsonans didn’t want that to come at the cost of an overequipped police force.