Tucson delays two RTA road projects amid funding shortfall

The Tucson City Council has agreed to delay two of its road improvement projects built into the Regional Transportation Authority’s 20-year transit improvement plan amid a funding shortfall that has left 11 city projects without clear paths for completion.

Voters passed a half-cent sales tax in 2006 to fund $1.9 billion worth of infrastructure projects across Pima County. The RTA is now estimating it’s about $150 million short of being able to complete the projects it promised voters.

Only projects within Tucson are yet to be fully funded, and the onus is on the city to come up with about $150 million worth of projects to delay or fund itself without the regional dollars built into the transportation package.

Despite misgivings the city has expressed with the RTA, the City Council voted unanimously Oct. 18 to delay two road improvement projects: Houghton Road from Broadway to Tanque Verde Road and 22nd Street from I-10 to Kino Parkway.

The motion, proposed by Councilman Steve Kozachik, comes with the contingency the RTA Board ensures the city’s remaining projects are completed with any regionally allocated funding the RTA receives through 2026, or “as long as necessary to complete those projects.”

The RTA’s governing board — comprised of nine members representing Tucson, Pima County, tribal nations, the Arizona Department of Transportation and other local jurisdictions — have already moved two projects to RTA Next, the next 20-year-transportation plan that could be on the ballot as early as 2024.

The current consideration is to move the two city projects into the yet-to-be voter-approved plan along with North Silverbell Road from Grant to Ina roads and North First Avenue from Orange Grove to Ina roads, which the RTA board has already voted to delay.

At the board’s next meeting on Nov. 3, RTA board members are expected to take a vote on moving the two city projects into the next RTA.

“One of the things that we have to make sure we find answers for and find a strategy and a path forward are delivering the projects that were promised to voters back in 2006. (Delaying two projects) was a huge step on behalf of our jurisdiction,” said Mayor Regina Romero, who represents the city on the RTA board.

Houghton, 22nd St. projects delayed

As of the latest funding analysis the RTA released in September, the total funding shortfall is somewhere between $130 million to $170 million based on projected sales tax revenues, state and federal funding. The RTA’s using the $150 million figure for planning purposes.

City Manager Michael Ortega recommended five of Tucson’s RTA projects for potential delay to alleviate the RTA’s funding gap. According to Ortega, his recommendations were based on the scope of each project and priorities expressed by the City Council and their constituents. The two delayed projects total about $133 million worth of savings for the RTA and have the potential for scope changes going into RTA Next based on changing public infrastructure needs.

The Houghton Road project runs into unincorporated county land in Tanque Verde. The original RTA ballot language said the road corridor would be widened to a four- and six-lane desert parkway with new bridges, sidewalks and bike lanes.

According to the city, North Houghton Road has “no apparent major congestion issues” or “pressing safety challenges.” Tucson’s exploring alternatives to reduce the project’s scope, but changes require further outreach and analysis. The project has a current estimated cost of $55.3 million.

The project is in Councilman Paul Cunningham’s Ward 2. He said he is working with constituents and “there is an opportunity to make that project better if RTA Next is passed.”

The second delayed project on 22nd Street from I-10 to Kino Parkway has a $78.3 million price tag to widen the corridor to a six-lane arterial. The stretch of road experiences high traffic congestion and is classified within the Pedestrian High-Injury Network, which comprises certain roads the city has identified as the most dangerous for pedestrians based on fatality and injury data.

According to Ortega, the project needs more public outreach on the impact it would have on the surrounding urban area, including neighborhoods and Santa Rita Park. The project is in Councilman Richard Fimbres’ Ward 5, and he has agreed the project needs more input from stakeholders.

Farhad Moghimi, the executive director of the RTA, said delaying the two projects “really helps with the remaining four years to be able to identify that if those revenues don't come in as healthy as we hoped them to come in, then we have this option to move projects to the next plan and let the voters decide.”

But the City Council has made clear it expects the delayed projects to be put at the front of the list in RTA Next and that they don’t count against Tucson’s next allotment of infrastructure improvements.

Moghimi said it’s “very feasible” to place the city’s projects into the first period of RTA Next. However, each member jurisdiction of the RTA isn’t allotted a certain amount of projects or funding when the new plan is developed, he said.

Instead, “it's more driven on the need and the priorities for those projects,” Moghimi said.

If RTA Next doesn’t pass, Moghimi said, the RTA will have to use regional, state and federal funds to complete the projects promised to voters in the current RTA.

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The City Council made sure to not tie the two delayed projects to RTA Next and said all remaining regional funding the RTA receives up to and past the expiration of the sales tax in 2026 should go toward completing Tucson’s projects.

East-side projects

The bulk of the city’s remaining projects are on Tucson's east side, causing frustration for the City Council members representing the city’s eastern wards. But the projects’ locations have also given council members more say in which projects they’re willing to delay.

“These projects have been a long time coming because folks voted on these in 2006 and they've really been looking forward to seeing this work completed,” Ward 4 City Councilwoman Nikki Lee said. “The risk of that not getting done is kind of sending shockwaves through the east side out here.”

Lee has advocated for certain projects to remain in the current RTA based on feedback from constituents, including building a bridge over the Pantano Wash on Harrison Road, which experiences frequent flooding.

The project was one of the five Ortega put forth for possible delay. Another suggestion to rescope the project included delaying building the bridge and repackaging the project as a single four-lane road widening project in the new RTA.

Lee said after talking to constituents, “There was not a single person that thought that we should take that risk.”

“Everyone wants to see the work get done. It was very clear that there's some uncertainty on the potential of a future RTA, and we need to do everything we can to get these projects delivered for the folks who are depending on that,” she said.

RTA Next

The city’s agreement to delay two of its projects isn’t the first concession it has made with the RTA. At the beginning of the year, Tucson vowed to leave the RTA by Feb. 1 unless the city — which represents more than half of the RTA’s tax base — had more of a say in the board’s decision-making process, and changes were made to address a massive funding gap for the city’s unfinished projects.

The city agreed to a compromise to increase city-designated members on some key RTA committees and come up with a plan to complete Tucson’s remaining RTA projects. While Tucson didn’t get its demand for a weighted voting mechanism where board members representing more of the region’s population would have more say on key decisions, the city decided to stay at the table.

Kozachik said he was “reluctant to propose” the motion to delay two city projects over increasing concern about the RTA’s ability to deliver the projects it promised to voters.

The RTA "is saying ‘if we can't fund your current RTA projects, we'll push it to the front of the line next time around.’ That's still money that's coming out of the half-cent sales tax they're going to be asking people to support,” he said. “So it will come off the bottom or off the top of the money that they have left to spend.”

As it currently stands, the council member doesn’t support an RTA Next.

“We are setting other mayors and councils up 15 years from now to have this exact same conversation. They're going to run out of money,” Kozachik said.

Romero said she’s “content with the steps that have been taken” but that it's also her priority to ensure “there's a good return on investment of Tucsonans' tax dollars.”

“I have to be very clear that I highly value the idea of bringing together different jurisdictions and having a regional strategy for transportation and infrastructure investment,” she said. “I think it's a good idea, I think it is very strong when the region's jurisdictions come together, and we have a unified approach.”

Other council members have expressed support for the next RTA despite the funding shortfalls that have put the city’s projects into question. Cunningham said he sees the value in the regional approach to infrastructure but would support bringing back the idea of weighted voting.

“Any initiatives that don't meet every single one of its deliverables, you're gonna have concerns about,” Cunningham said. “But let's look at the overall body of work and what we got. … If we're gonna sit around and point fingers right now, it's a little too late for that.”

As part of the motion the City Council passed to approve the two projects’ delay, council members also asked for a 360 review of Moghimi, which is a thorough inspection of an employee’s performance partially based on feedback from colleagues, and in Moghimi’s case, the constituency of the regional projects he oversees.

The executive director said the council has no authority to call for a review of the leader of a separate government entity, and the RTA Board would have to approve a 360 review for it to be conducted.