In the run-up to a joint meeting with the Tucson City Council, members of the Pima County Board of Supervisors have been lashing back at Mayor Regina Romero and members of the council over issues of homelessness, housing and drug abuse.
In recent weeks, the mayor and council have demanded that Pima County do more about the homelessness and addiction problems plaguing the Tucson area.
In releasing her Safe City Initiative on Oct. 12, for example, Romero wrote: “We must demand that our State and County governments step up to help Tucsonans with this public health crisis.”
In comments from the dais at Tuesday Pima County board meeting, and in a written statement, board chair Rex Scott addressed that and other pointed comments by the mayor and council.
“When she rolled out her Safe City Initiative last month, Mayor Romero claimed the county has not been an ‘active participant’ in addressing these issues,” Scott said. “To the contrary, Pima County has been and will continue to be a leader in taking on unsheltered homelessness and the associated need to increase our housing stock.”
Supervisor Andres Cano also objected to some of the discussion city officials have had about Pima County-owned property.
“I expect respect, and I expect an ability for us to have thoughtful conversations about how we’re going to move forward, particularly as it relates to the use of county property and county facilities,” Cano warned.
He then explained how the county-owned Mission Annex, discussed by city officials as a possible site for drug or housing programs, is not necessarily up to that use without significant spending.
Scott elaborated: “Our staff informs me that the county has already spent over a million dollars to prepare that property for any future uses. Whatever we do there, we want it to be done correctly and to produce tangible outcomes, as our Transition Center already has.
“Our partnership with the City will be crucial to taking the next right steps at the Mission Annex, but it is inaccurate and unfair to assert that we are dragging our feet.”
Scott also noted that, although city officials have sometimes blamed the county for problems along the Huckelberry Loop bike trail, “When it comes to responsibility for law enforcement, every one of those high-profile areas is within the City of Tucson.”
There’s time for passions to cool before the metro area’s two big elected boards meet. The joint city-county meeting is scheduled for 12:30 p.m. Nov. 18 at the Pima Association of Governments office, 1 E. Broadway.
No observers allowed
Members of the Pima County GOP showed up to election centers on Tuesday, prepared to observe the voting.
They were turned away.
The reason why boils down to the fact that the Pima County Recorder’s Office ran those centers Tuesday. And the recorder’s office says it does not have to permit observers.
A voter on Tuesday takes a mail-in ballot to the office of the Flowing Wells School District, 1556 W. Prince Road.
Why? They are not formally considered voting centers or polling sites, but rather “ballot replacement centers.” In an all-mail election, like the one ended Tuesday, only people who need replacement ballots show up at the sites to vote.
“In an all-vote-by-mail election, Election Day Ballot Replacement Sites fall under the Recorder’s responsibilities,” Recorder Gabriella Cazares-Kelly said in a written statement. “The Recorder still welcomes political party observers at the Ballot Processing Center, with prior notification from the political party chair.”
As it turns out, this writer was one of those who lost his ballot and needed a replacement. To me, the experience was practically indistinguishable from voting at an election-day polling site.
Show an ID, get a ballot, fill it out in a booth, turn it in.
“We presented a list of observers and credentialed them, and none of them were let in,” said Pima County Republican Chair Kathleen Winn. “They said this wasn’t a voting center. They said these were ballot-replacement centers.”
Under state law, party observers must be allowed into polling places, and Winn contends that law should apply to these centers as well, since they are places where people go to vote.
The Pima County Democratic Party didn’t send any observers — “we don’t for city elections,” party chair Eric Robbins said via text.
Video leads to threats
A video showing Pima County employees emptying a ballot box in Tucson Tuesday has gone viral, with online commenters claiming it showed election malfeasance.
A video posted on X of Pima County election workers emptying a ballot box has caused a stir with some people claiming it showed election malfeasance.
The video shows two people emptying a ballot box while a third person looks on, but in the eyes of some it was evidence of some sort of fraud.
That claim went wild, leading to fact checks by news agencies but also threats of violence, Pima County Recorder Gabriella Cazares-Kelly said, in a news release Wednesday.
“The Pima County Recorder’s Office is aware of the deeply disturbing threats against our election workers as a result to misleading videos circulating online of false accusations regarding election fraud,” she said in a written statement. “We want to make it clear that the individuals in the video were performing their lawful duties in full compliance with Arizona state statutes and established election procedures.”
The employees were all permanent, full-time employees of the recorder’s office, including a two-person, bipartisan team carrying the two keys required to open the box. That box was emptied three times Tuesday, Cazares-Kelly said.
“The team removed the ballots from the overfilled box and placed them into black transfer bags,” she went on. “These were then sealed, logged and immediately transported to our Ballot Processing Center in a rental car clearly marked as an Official Election vehicle.”
