Tucson City Councilman Steve Kozachik to resign

Tucson city councilman Steve Kozachik will be stepping down at the end of the month to take a job with Pima County, he said Monday in his weekly newsletter.

Kozachik, who won his fourth bid for Tucson’s Ward 6 seat in 2021, will step down March 31 to begin a new job as Pima County’s “point of contact in managing” the Mosaic Quarter sports complex.

“This will be my final newsletter as a city council member. ... I appreciate all of the positive comments many of you have shared. But today’s a wrap — I’m going to work for Pima County,” Kozachik wrote. “The county has offered me the opportunity to be their point of contact in managing that project, along with assisting with annual updates and execution of their Integrated Infrastructure Plan. But once Mosaic gets started that’ll constitute a significant amount of attention.”

Kozachik’s final day on the city council will be March 31, and he will then immediately begin his work with the county, he said in the newsletter.

Tucson’s mayor and council will appoint someone to the Ward 6 seat for the remainder of Kozachik’s term, which was set to end in 2025.

Kozachik has been a valuable member of the city council, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero said in a statement on social media.

“ For the last 14 years, Councilmember Kozachik has served the residents of Ward 6 effectively,” Romero said in the statement. “His attention to detail, neighborhood needs, infrastructure projects and more has been valuable to the work of our Council. He comes to each meeting prepared and ready to ask the hard questions.”

Kozachik referenced his time spent with Arizona Athletics doing similar work.

“We expanded the football stadium, added the jumbotron, remodeled all of the McKale locker and concessions rooms, built the Kasser aquatics facility, the Roby gymnastics building, the Hillenbrand softball stadium, and the Jefferson gymnasium,” Kozachik wrote in his newsletter. “The Knott MQ project will be all of that, and more.”

When he was first elected in 2009, Kozachik was a Tea Party-supported Republican candidate who defeated incumbent Nina Trasoff.

“We need to start cutting back on government overreach,” he told a cheering crowd in Presidio Plaza during his 2009 campaign.

But before his first re-election bid, Kozachik switched parties and ran as a Democrat and has remained in the party since. Kozachik acknowledged at the time that his party affiliation was limited to fiscal conservatism, the Star’s Tim Steller reported during the councilman’s first re-election campaign.

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“I’m particularly proud of helping preserve the Benedictine Monastery, in perpetuity,” Kozachik told the Star on Monday while citing some of his accomplishments. “The plastic reuse program is something the community has been very supportive of and I’m happy to have been able to get that kicked off, and it’ll be fun to watch it cross the finish line under someone else’s leadership.”

One of Kozachik’s first moves was “to stop what would have been a financial train wreck,” he said in his newsletter, referencing the proposed $200 million Sheraton convention hotel that would’ve been built next to the Tucson Convention Center in the early 2010s.

“Other cities who went down that path have lived to regret it,” Kozachik wrote. “In our case we pivoted from swinging for the fences to hitting singles and doubles. Downtown development is thriving.”

In his newsletter, Kozachik referenced his office’s work in banning dog steroid injections and the eventual shutdown of the Tucson Greyhound Park, as well as his work to reunite an Afghan refugee with his family.

“Whoever takes this position had better understand that constituent services is the number 1 responsibility of the job. We’re the first touch people have on civic issues,” Kozachik said in his newsletter. “Being responsive and engaged is what you deserve, and what we’ve tried to provide. I know we’ve done it well.”

Vice Mayor Kevin Dahl said he is “not looking forward to the selection process” because of the “big shoes to fill.”

“Well, I’m sad. I really enjoyed working with Steve; he is such a hard worker and digs deep into the details of things,” Dahl said. “He’s such an asset on many issues and I will really miss that about him.”

Kozachik, looking towards Tucson’s future, says there’s “big issues on the immediate horizon” that coincide with his departure. His top immediate objective, he said, is to make sure his staff “lands on their feet,” Kozachik said Monday in an interview.

“One of the things I’ve said to people while talking about this job is that the answer is not going to be me going to my staff and saying, ‘gee guess what guys, I got a new job and you’re all out of work,’” Kozachik told the Star. “(But) we still have some issues to wrap up.”

A few of those include other city personnel, namely city manager Michael Ortega’s upcoming resignation after the Tucson’s budget is bolted down, as well as city attorney Mike Rankin, whose contract is up in June.

“When I began this work in 2009 we faced a $40M budget deficit. The city faces another similarly high deficit in (fiscal year 2026) if they don’t begin to address it now. The issue of the TEP transmission line project has no easy solution. The RTA Next plan may be headed to the ballot in (2025),” Kozachik wrote.

Kozachik and his staff have scheduled a public going-away event from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday, March 26, at the Shanty, 401 E. 9th St.