Firefighters urge YES on Prop 413
The Tucson Fire Fighters Association would like to encourage the Tucson Community to support Proposition 413. This proposition will provide much-needed adjustments in salary for our Tucson Mayor and City Council Members. The Tucson Fire Fighters Association represents the commissioned men and women of the Tucson Fire Department. As we advocate for our members’ wages, benefits and working conditions, we fully understand the importance of recruiting and retaining quality employees.
Our elected officials need to commit their full attention to their responsibilities to the community and City employees that they serve. We simply cannot afford to have our elected officials, leading our city, in a part-time capacity because they must work a second job to support their families.
Please join your Tucson Fire Fighters in supporting Proposition 413 and compensating our elected officials at a competitive wage, that allows them and future elected officials to dedicate their time to keeping Tucson a great place to live and work.
Jon North, Vice President Tucson Fire Fighters
Association
West side
Mayor IS addressing today’s realities
Re: the Oct. 12 letter “Neighborhood trees.”
A former Councilmember’s letter reflected realities during his time in office when homelessness and mental health concerns were not at the crisis level that confronts us — and too many of our neighbors — today. During his time on Council and mine, partnering with nonprofits was sufficient to create humane solutions. And our police department was fully staffed.
Mayor Regina Romero and Councilmembers Kevin Dahl and Lane Santa Cruz are proactively working with neighborhoods and businesses. Under their leadership, more than 650 previously unsheltered people now have permanent housing. They brought $50 million to the ‘Ward 3 Thrive in the 05’ zone to create affordable housing options, support local businesses, and improve access to healthcare and education. Their work to plant native trees is helping reduce the urban heat island effect.
Mayor Romero and her colleagues are confronting today’s crisis reality and delivering community-supported and evidence-based solutions for Tucson. I applaud their efforts and their resolve.
Nina Trasoff
Midtown
Wrong on Navajo Wash
Re: the Oct. 12 letter “Neighborhood trees.”
This letter is disappointing. Everyone is welcome to contact my office to discuss any issue at any time — as the neighbors around Navajo Wash and Ward 3 residents have routinely done during my two years in office. I have never received a phone call or email from this letter writer on this issue. He clearly gets my newsletter. I’m surprised the letter writer lays blame on me, my staff, and the city for the actions of a few people who cut down over 75 trees on land not belonging to them, trees lovingly tended by neighbors for years. I’m saddened the former councilman would think a complex, nationwide problem — the affordable housing crisis and opioid epidemic — is created by or is unique to Tucson. The amount of resources Mayor and Council direct toward our unsheltered neighbors is staggering. Cutting down trees in response to homelessness is no more effective than his uninformed opinion. Armchair quarterbacking and nasty letters don’t help.
Kevin Dahl, Tucson City Council Member Ward 3
North side
Fair wage for Mayor, Council: YES on 413
Do you believe that being Tucson’s Mayor or serving on the City Council is a full-time job? Did you know that the last time “we the people” approved a raise for Mayor and Council, we were still marking calendars starting with 19xx? It was 23 YEARS AGO. Asking leaders to help lead, guide, and build our beautiful community and underscoring how committed we are to equity while paying them less than the City’s minimum wage is unsustainable. Proposition 413 will not raise taxes nor reduce services to City residents. It will help open the door for future leaders who might not have to work two jobs while balancing the needs of their communities. Any commitment to a Fair Wage must include our own Mayor and Council.
Please vote YES on Prop 413.
Respectfully,
Eric Robbins, Chair, Pima County Democratic Party
South Tucson
Grijalva working for lasting security
As an American Jew who lived in Israel and as a healthcare practitioner working with trauma, I am extremely grateful to my representative, Raúl Grijalva. He was one of 55 members of Congress who signed a letter to President Biden and Secretary Blinken. They note that a complete siege depriving over a million Palestinian children of “food, water, and electricity, would be a violation of international humanitarian law.” And, “We cannot achieve lasting peace and security for Israelis without addressing the humanitarian crises in Gaza and the West Bank.”
He has also addressed humanitarian needs and desires for safety and real security along our border.
When I was in school, a boy named Raúl was a star athlete. I can hear the cheerleaders shouting, “Raúl! Raúl! Raúl!”
Well, that’s how I feel right now about our Raúl Grijalva.
Dev Mayaan
Three Points
John Troy Vaughn, left, looks out window as the Sun Tran bus approaches a stop on Tuesday. Opponents of free fares call Sun Tran the “crime bus,” but Vaughn has ridden over ten routes thus far and doesn’t see it that way.
Boarding process is faster
Re: the Oct. 15 article “Free fares not Sun Tran’s main problem.”
This article gets it right. I use Sun Tran every day as my primary mode of transportation, by choice. I don’t feel any less safe than I do in any other public setting. Eliminating fares has made the bus riding experience better, even for those of us who could afford to pay, because the boarding process is so much faster now. As the article noted, there has been an uptick in anti-social behavior since the pandemic began, but this is something being experienced all across the country in many different types of public spaces. In light of this, trying to connect a few isolated incidents on our buses to the free fare policy is ludicrous. Everyone in the city benefits from reducing the number of vehicles on our roads. It’s a shame that candidates and other local groups continue to lie and exaggerate about safety on Sun Tran to score political points, as they are almost certainly discouraging ridership.
Thomas Stellini
Downtown
We support Israel
I am furious with an anger I didn’t know existed in me over the massacre in Israel.
Jews all over the world are no more than three degrees of separation from those who were slaughtered or called up to war.
The Hamas covenant issued on August 18, 1988, states that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” While setting up their evil plans, they use people in Gaza as human shields, knowing that Israel will strike back.
Golda Meir said, “The world hates a Jew who strikes back. The world loves us only when we can be pitied.” We Jews do not want nor need your pity. What we do want is to live without fear of being targets of Islamic Jihad.
To quote Dr. Sheila Nazarian of Magen David Adom (Israel’s National EMS): “If you are silent when terrorists murder Israelis, then stay silent when Israel defends itself.”
Maureen and Sandy Salz
Oro Valley
Diversity and Proposition 403
The Mayor claims that low pay for elected positions is a “vestige of systems that really were created to keep diverse communities from participating civically in their democracy as elected representatives,” and that pay raises would attract more diverse future talent to the Council. She is correct that Council members have the responsibilities of a full-time job but receive part-time pay and that a pay increase is justified. However, if the Mayor and most Council members were really interested in promoting Council diversity, they would not oppose efforts to reform the City’s ward-only primary/city-wide general election system, which effectively ensures one-party governance and disenfranchises a significant portion of Tucson’s electorate. You can’t honestly claim to support diversity when it promotes your political influence but oppose diversity when it does not.
Ted Hinderaker
Midtown
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