2025 horse racing season at Tucson's Rillito Downs canceled

Stopping the search will also allow county officials to “fully assess the current condition” of the historic track at Rillito Downs, after it sustained “significant damage” from a storm in early July, said Pima County Administrator Jan Lesher.

Since 2014, commercial races at Rillito Downs have been operated by Rillito Racing, Inc. and the Rillito Park Foundation. That came to an end this year, after the Pima County Board of Supervisors decided to stop granting approval of commercial race dates because Rillito Racing, Inc. did not submit financial audits to the county for the years of 2021, 2022 and 2023, as the Star previously reported. Cancellation of the 2024 season ended an 80-year tradition of annual horse racing at the site.

Rillito Racing’s contract ended June 30, and a “Request for Proposals,” or RFP, was issued on July 1. If an operator wants to host racing at Rillito Downs, it needs to submit a proposal through the RFP process. In this instance, the count’s Parks and Recreation and Procurement departments are responsible for evaluating and recommending the best proposal. That is then sent to the Board of Supervisors for final approval, Lesher said.

The Pima County Fair Horse Racing Commission is a five-member advisory commission to the board whose mission is to operate fair horse racing days, Lesher said. Each member represents one of the five county districts and is appointed by their respective supervisor to serve two-year terms.

Then there is the Pima County Fair Horse Racing Foundation, which Lesher said used to be connected to the commission, but the two are now separate entities. It used to be that whomever was selected to the commission would also sit on the foundation’s board, but there was a “more a formal split” between the two, she said.

“It used to be that the foundation and the commission for horse racing were one in the same,” Lesher told the Star. “Now there is no longer that ‘automatic’ relationship.”

According to Lesher, however, four of the five commission members currently sit on the foundation board.

The submission window for proposals opened July 1 with a deadline of Aug. 1.

“To ensure the review and selection process” was fully transparent and “follows best practices for procurement and can sustain a potential challenge to the award by any party,” Lesher asked Terri Spencer, county procurement director, “to review communications” between the commission and the foundation “and provide a recommendation regarding the process for an operator for Rillito Horseracing,” Lesher wrote in a July 22 memorandum.

Lesher told the Star Friday that a meeting was held at Rillito Downs earlier this year for individuals interested in bidding on the RFP. Some of the individuals presently sit on the commission, but were there on behalf of the foundation, she said.

Spencer said in a July 22 memo to Lesher that her review found that County Fair Horse Racing Commissioner Timothy Kelly, who represents District 1, “assisted in the drafting of the RFP and was appointed as an Evaluation Committee Member.”

Kelly was appointed to the commission to represent District 1 by Supervisor Rex Scott in March 2023. Kelly could not be reached for comment Friday, but he has adamantly denied having any involvement in the Evaluation Committee.

Scott declined to discuss the situation further but told the Star he supports “all the decisions Ms. Lesher has made” this week.

“After the RFP publication date of (July 1), the Procurement Department was informed that the Foundation intends to submit a response to the RFP,” Spencer said in her memo.

Kelly later recused himself from the evaluation committee on July 11, “confirming the Foundation’s intent to submit a response to the RFP,” she wrote.

“Since (Kelly) received an advance copy of the scope of work, participated in the RFP drafting process, and was an Evaluation Committee Member, he and the Foundation as a potential respondent to the RFP have access to the information that was not equally provided to all potential applicants,” Spencer said.

“It is my determination that an unfair advantage exists, and the procurement process is compromised,” Spencer wrote. “To preserve the integrity of the competitive procurement process, the solicitation must be cancelled and may be re-solicited at a future date.”

No entities submitted a proposal to the RFP as it was early on in the process, Lesher said, but because the foundation was intending to apply, an “appearance of conflict was the concern.”

“For me, it’s the appearance of conflict in my conversation with others. ... It could be that those five individuals who make up the commission could be the absolute perfect people to run fair horse racing in our community. They might be the right ones and (they) have that skill set,” Lesher said. “I think that ... people are suspicious enough about governments sometimes, and so if you look at two different groups, each of which are two completely separate entities that are made up of five people and four of them are the same, most people would think that there was a sharing of information.”

“I don’t think that occurred, but out of an abundance of caution” the RFP was canceled, Lesher told the Star. “So it was the appearance (of a conflict). I think people would look at that and might think there was a thumb on the scale.”

A date for a re-solicitation of the RFP has yet to be set.

Concerns about the track and facilities

Cancelling of the procurement process is not the only contributing factor to the cancellation of the 2025 season, Lesher said.

“There has been a continued concern, that simply the track is not up to a standard that we need for people to race safely,” she said. “There was a possibility, that if we got the RFP moving quickly and had responses in August, and we picked a vendor, it is possible that we could have gotten a new vendor in and enough done to the track to make it able to race next year, but with a question about the RFP and potential to reboot the RFP in any way, was going to delay us.”

In its present state, Lesher wrote in her memo, Rillito Downs does not meet facility requirements set forth by the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority), a regulatory organization that develops rules relating to horseracing, anti-doping and medication control, as well as racetrack safety.

“So, that it made it, from my perspective, impossible to get the track safe for people and for horses by the beginning of 2025,” she said. “The final sort of cherry on top was the last big storm (in early July). It took out more of the physical equipment, stalls, barns at Rillito that are critical to horse racing.”

The storms caused significant damage to the track, including “the destruction of roughly half of the temporary barns on site,” Lesher wrote. This created a “perfect storm,” she told the Star, and the county is “just not going to be ready.”

Cancelling the process will allow the county to assess the track’s condition, Lesher said in her memo, but “it could be some time until the full extent and cost of damages are known.”

Concerns about the track were was also shared by JoAnn di Filippo, chair of the Pima County Fair Horse Racing Commission, in a follow-up July 23 memorandum.

“As licensed horseracing professionals, the Commissioners are aware of past activities and the need for information which if not addressed timely (that is, prior to an RFP) can negatively impact the racetrack, horsemen, operations, funding resources, and any response to the RFP, among others — let alone create a potential liability for the county,” di Filippo wrote. “Until all outstanding issues can be resolved including but not limited to equitable rent structure, equipment inventory (what works/what doesn’t; what’s there/what isn’t), available funding resources, HISA requirements which require substantial financial investments— all which must be determined prior to issuing an RFP, among other things.”

“Quite simply, the county was not ready to disseminate an RFP for Rillito Racetrack,” she wrote.

Denial of ‘unfair advantage’ claim

Di Filippo rebuked Lesher and Spencer’s claims of an “unfair advantage.” She wrote that she asked Kelly if he ever received a copy of the draft and/or the final RFP, “and his response was in the negative and affirmed in his written responses.”

“The Commission and the Foundation have acted with utmost respect for the procurement process and have never been privy to any advance information related to the scope of the work, advanced copies of RFP documentation, and/or any other information pertinent to the RFP and/or the RFP process,” di Filippo said in her response to Lesher. “To state otherwise, is a misrepresentation of information and specifically an assault on Mr. Kelly’s reputation which should be corrected by the county.”

Kelly responded in a July 23 email sent to di Filippo, saying he specifically never had any special access because he was working at a Wyoming racetrack from mid-May through early July.

“I learned the Pima County Fair Horse Racing Foundation was going to submit an RFP bid on (Aug. 1) at the Pima County Fair Horse Racing Commission meeting held (July 10),” Kelly told di Filippo in a July 14 email. “I have never attended an official RFP meeting since my selection was made by our (commission) on May 20. Since no participation has occurred thus far, I do not consider a conflict of interest being a concern going forward.”

“It is unfortunate and unprofessional that the County Administrator resorts to underhanded tactics to throw the blame on me as a participant possessing an unfair advantage in the bidding for a new contract. This is absurd and nothing further from the truth,” Kelly wrote in his email.

Kelly gave his own detailed account of the timeline of events — including that he went to Wyoming in May to work at another track — that he says shows he wasn’t involved in the RFP process here. “I was a member of the evaluation committee in name only,” he wrote. “I had no direct or indirect involvement in the RFP process or meetings.”

Lesher was “willing to find a scapegoat to throw under the bus,” Kelly wrote. The Star could not reach him for comment Friday and Lesher declined to comment on his criticism.