North Pima News

Two Tucson City Council members want to revoke Pima County’s recently approved PAYGO plan, which uses property taxes to improve county roads.

“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,” Tucson Vice Mayor Paul Cunningham and Councilman Steve Kozachik said in a letter to constituents. “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 was written last week after three months of having the pay-as-you-go plan in place, which uses property taxes to not only make improvements to roads but other infrastructure projects as well. The plan is expected to make approximately $387 million, officials estimated in November, with $220 million being used on road improvements. 

In the letter, Cunningham and Kozachik said the policy is making property taxes more than they would be without the plan so road improvements outside of city limits could be funded. 

Since Tucson residents make up a little less than half of Pima County’s population, they should have a say in road projects, Kozachik told the Arizona Daily Star. 

“If they want to allocate 40 percent 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,” Kozachik told the Arizona Daily Star. “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.”

Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry addressed Cunningham and Kozachik’s letter in an email to his supervisors.

Allocating tax money for road improvements in the county doesn’t create fairness issues within the municipalities because of the 1997 Highway User Revenue Fund Bond Program, which voters approved, Huckelberry said in his memo. 

His memo included a table which showed Tucson has received approximately $1 billion for improving roads through 2019, while other cities in the county, such as Oro Valley ($57 million), South Tucson ($9.3 million), Sahuarit ($22 million) and Marana ($39 million) received less money for road repairs in the same time period. Pima County also received less with $884 million. 

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

Cunningham threatened to take Pima County to court for the City of Tucson. 

“This is one of the most disgusting things a government can do,” Cunningham told the Arizona Daily Star. “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.”