The Pima County Board of Supervisors Tuesday authorized letting backers of an effort to make Vail its own town begin collecting signatures to get the matter on the ballot.
Backers now have less than a month to obtain enough signatures to make it happen.
Incorporate Vail Arizona, or IVA, has followed the process and many statutory guidelines to make Vail its own municipality, including submitting a notice to the Pima County Board of Supervisors of its intention to do so in October last year.
The board’s action on Tuesday is strictly “ministerial,” according to a memo from County Administrator Jan Lesher. Petitioners pushing for incorporation have met the minimum requirements to proceed in the incorporation process.
The petitioners have to obtain signatures from 10% of the area’s registered voters, which totals 1,537, and submit them by Aug. 8 to allow time for the incorporation question to be placed on the Nov. 7 ballot. That truncates the 180-day signature gathering deadline outlined in state statute by more than 150 days.
Vail residents are largely divided on whether to incorporate into a town. While the group pushing for incorporation has hailed the effort as a way for the historically rural area to gain local control and prevent future annexation efforts by Tucson, many dissenters have aired concerns about higher taxes and uncontrolled growth.
Several homeowners sent requests to the Board of Supervisors for their residences to be excluded from the proposed incorporation boundaries. However, the board doesn’t have the authority to change the boundaries submitted for a potential new town, Lesher said.
The board’s vote also approved creating three “unincorporated islands” if Vail becomes a town, or unincorporated areas surrounded by incorporated land. The three areas are mainly state trust land, Lesher said, and Tucson is working with the State Land Department to annex the land.
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