Tucson, Pima feuding over how county is paying for its road repairs

At least two Tucson City Council members are calling on Pima County to rescind its recently passed “PAYGO” plan, arguing that Tucson residents should not have their property taxes used to pay for improvements to county roads.

In a letter to constituents sent last week, Tucson Vice Mayor Paul Cunningham and Councilman Steve Kozachik said the policy “is keeping city of Tucson residents’ primary property tax artificially higher than it would be without the plan in order to pay for road repair outside of the city limits.”

“The Board of Supervisors can and should rescind the PAYGO policy as far as it uses city of Tucson property taxes to pay for road repair in unincorporated Pima County,” the letter states. “Keeping it intact as it is currently written places all of the relational progress we’ve made over the past 10 years in jeopardy, and is bad timing as the City Council will soon be considering issues such as water rates, both within and outside of city limits, and what our support for the RTA extension might look like.”

The letter comes about three months after the supervisors passed the pay-as-you-go plan as a way to fund county infrastructure projects through fiscal year 2030.

Officials estimated in November that the plan would generate $387 million, with an estimated $220 million being used for county road repairs. The money for the projects comes from a percentage of the secondary property tax and a portion of the taxes no longer needed to pay off bonds.

Kozachik told the Arizona Daily Star on Friday that Tucson residents, who make up a little less than half of the county’s population, should have a “seat at the table” when it comes to discussing road projects.

“If they want to allocate 40% of what they’re collecting on this artificial property tax increase and let us choose (the roads), we can have that conversation. But it needs to be a conversation,” he said. “If they’re going to talk about property tax increases and using those to fund roads, we need to be at the table, both in terms of what that increase would be and which roads are going to be fixed. ... What they’re doing is technically totally legal. It’s not ethical.”

Cunningham called what Pima County is doing “absolutely vile.”

“This is one of the most disgusting things a government can do. They are taking tax monies paid in hard-working and blue-collar neighborhoods and using it to fix roads in some of the county’s wealthiest areas,” said Cunningham, who threatened to take Pima County to court on behalf of Tucson.

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Representatives from Pima County did not respond to phone and email requests for comment on Monday — a county holiday for Presidents Day. But Pima County administrator Chuck Huckelberry addressed the letter in a memo to supervisors on Friday in which he argued that while the county is allocating money for county road repairs, it “does not create an equity issue with the municipalities” due to the voter-approved 1997 Highway User Revenue Fund Bond Program.

He attached a table that showed Tucson has received a little more than $1 billion for road projects through 2019 through HURF money, while the county has received about $884 million during the same time period. Oro Valley received roughly $57 million, South Tucson $9.3 million, Sahuarita $22 million and Marana $39 million during the same time period.

“It also noteworthy that the unincorporated county’s 2,171 centerline miles of roadways is 21.6% greater than the city’s 1,703 centerline miles; and that state-shared revenues are the only dedicated funding source for unincorporated roadways,” Huckelberry wrote.

He added that the PAYGO is a “limited-term strategy” and took issue that the city raised its concerns during the upcoming fiscal year budget process.

In response, Kozachik said that if Huckelberry “wants to complain about interrupting a budget cycle, we’re right in the middle of that, too.”

He said the city is currently discussing water rate increases, environmental services increases, recycling increases, parks fees and changes in impact fees, calling that potential burden to city taxpayers as “death by 1,000 paper cuts.”

He pointed out that the city has been able to pass bonds to fund road projects, while the county hasn’t. Tucson voters passed Proposition 101 in 2017, which increased the city sales tax by a half-cent to generate $100 million for roads, while the PAYGO policy was crafted after county voters rejected a $430 million bond for road repairs in 2018.

“They clearly have a trust issue with the voters. They’ve been completely unable to get their support for anything that they’ve thrown out there. And this is no way to increase your trust with voters — especially voters in the city of Tucson,” Kozachik said.