Star reporter Darren DaRonco's top stories of 2014

Tucson spent nearly $5 million buying back unused sick days from police officers and firefighters the past two years — and shelled out another $2 million in what the city attorney now says were illegal pension contributions for those unworked days.

The city expects to spend another $2.6 million buying back sick days this year.

City policy lets police and fire personnel cash in up to 208 hours of unused sick hours each year as a way to reward long-time officers and keep them in the fold. Other city employees also can cash in unused sick days, but only when they retire — and even then, they only get 25 percent to 50 percent of the value of those hours.

Police employees can get full pay for their sick time if they have worked for the city for 15 years and have at least 480 hours banked. Fire employees can start cashing in after five years if they have a minimum of 360 hours.

A public safety employee can earn about 3,200 hours of sick time over a 25-year career. A 30-year employee could earn more than 4,000 hours.

In 2012, the city paid $2.4 million to 520 police and fire employees for unused sick time, 158 of whom cashed in $6,000 or more. The following year, the city paid $2.5 million to 547 employees, with 178 employees taking home $6,000 or more.

The biggest beneficiaries of the policy over the past two years are Police Chief Roberto Villaseñor, who cashed in almost $32,000; Fire Chief James Critchley at $30,000; interim TCC director and former Deputy Police Chief Sharon Allen at $29,000; Assistant Police Chief John Leavitt at $27,000; and Assistant Police Chief Brett Klein at $25,000.

Villaseñor defended the program and said it’s integral to attracting quality officers and keeping them from fleeing to higher paying cities like Phoenix or Mesa.

The city once attempted to keep pace with police and fire wages but quickly fell behind, he said. City officials didn’t like the idea of handing out regular pay raises to police and fire employees and not to other workers, so programs like sick-leave sell-back were implemented instead, Villaseñor said.

He said he resents that some would criticize top officers who received the extra dollars. If the extra compensation weren’t available to everyone across the ranks, he said, top commanders would head to wherever the pay is better.

“We definitely respect that people who work in the private sector do not have benefits like that, but we don’t ask the people in the private sector to do the things we ask police officers to do,” said Jason Winsky, government affairs director for the Tucson Police Officers Association, the union representing local police.

“Police officers aren’t special, but they are different,” he said. “We ask them to do more than the average citizen.”

Winsky said if an officer decides to save his sick leave he should be rewarded, “Because when that officer consistently shows up for work, that enables us to provide the community with better service.”

Pension contributions

On top of direct payments to employees, the city has contributed more than $2 million toward the pensions of public safety employees over two years as a result of cashing in unused sick days.

But City Attorney Mike Rankin concluded in a legal opinion on March 26 that state law prohibits the city from counting unused sick-time dollars toward an employees’ pension.

Although the city has been paying pension benefits on unused sick hours for 14 years, Rankin said, “In my opinion, it is outside the definition of pensionable compensation.”

Rankin said his office looked into the matter after Phoenix was sued over a similar issue last year.

The union disagrees with Rankin’s findings. Winsky said the union considers sick-leave sell-back to be longevity pay since it applies only to TPD veterans. Longevity pay can apply to pensions under state law. However, the City Council abolished longevity pay more than 25 years ago.

He said the Phoenix lawsuit will ultimately determine which definition is correct, but for now the city is dropping the pension contributions associated with sick-time sell-backs based on Rankin’s opinion.

Retirement benefits for most fire and police personnel are calculated using their three consecutive highest-earning years, said Jared Smout, deputy administrator of the state’s Public Safety Personnel Retirement System.

The Legislature passed a law about eight years ago to prevent employees from pumping up their pensions by using lump-sum payments, like the sick-time sell-back, to boost their salary in the final years of their careers, he said.

The practice, often referred to as pension spiking, creates a disparity between what employees contribute over their careers and what they receive when they retire.

If annual pay in those years is significantly higher than what an employee earned in a typical year, the amount received in retirement doesn’t align with what a person paid into the system.

“The pension (contribution) does not match with the pension being paid out,” Smout said.

Smout said the state retirement system doesn’t take a position on what local municipalities count or don’t count toward pensions. He said the decisions one city makes regarding its pension doesn’t affect another.

But those decisions do affect taxpayers, said Goldwater Institute attorney Jon Riches.

Riches, whose group is suing Phoenix over pensions, said inflated final salaries can translate into millions of dollars down the road for taxpayers who have to cover bloated monthly payments to employees who typically retire at much younger ages than other workers.

He said sick leave was never intended to pad a nest egg.

“If someone gets sick, then they stay home so they don’t contaminate the rest of the workforce. And that’s reasonable,” Riches said. “But that same day was never meant to be added to employee retirement benefits.”

He said state law on that point is “clear as day, and it doesn’t take a lawyer to tell you these payments are illegal.”

CHANGE OF COURSE

Based on Rankin’s opinion, the city will discontinue the practice of counting the sick-leave sell-backs towards retirement, Chief Financial Officer Kelly Gottschalk said.

But the change, to take effect by summer, cannot apply retroactively and will only affect employees in future years.

The change doesn’t require a council vote, she said, but the council would need to vote if it wants to end the annual sick-leave payments entirely.

And one City Council member plans on doing just that.

“The purpose of sick days is so someone doesn’t take a hit when they’re out sick,” Councilman Steve Kozachik said. “They shouldn’t be used as an annual Christmas bonus for those at the top of the pay scale.”

Kozachik said with budget cuts on the table this year, he’s going to call on his colleagues to end the practice.

“The council can’t be nickel-and-diming bus fares for poor people and leave this kind of money for the top of the food chain.”

In the past, governments may have adopted more generous benefits to help lower-paid public servants keep up with their private-sector peers, but Kozachik said the rationale doesn’t apply any longer.

“That doesn’t hold water,” he said. “Our employees aren’t poorly compensated. And when you factor in some of these benefits, they exceed what you can make in the private sector, especially in this economy.”

The city of Tucson takes a firm position when it comes to violations of its building code or the Americans with Disabilities Act — unless, that is, the violator is the city of Tucson.

The city has been operating a downtown dirt parking lot in violation of its own code and the federal law for years.

Many downtown workers take advantage of the low rates at the city’s Toole Lot, on the northeast corner of North Sixth and East Toole avenues.

But the lot breaks numerous major rules in the code.

Besides being unpaved, which is required of all other commercial parking lots, it lacks handicapped spots, and it doesn’t mark individual parking boundaries.

City policy requires that each department adhere to codes and ordinances.

Waivers can be granted, but none ever have been for the lot. Furthermore, city rules explicitly require compliance with the ADA, without exception.

Parkwise, which runs the lot and enforces parking regulations on others, declined comment, citing pending litigation. A claim, but no lawsuit, has been filed against the city over the violations and the impact they have on private-sector competitors.

INSULTING

Downtown parking lot operators consider the city’s flouting of the rule a slap in the face.

“I doubt (anyone) could get away with a vacant piece of ground and park cars on it while waiting for something to happen,” said Arizona Autoparks president Geoff Shepard.

In a further blow to neighboring commercial lots, the city also offers cut-rate prices compared to what the private sector can afford, Shepard said.

The city charges $15 the first month and $35 thereafter to park in the Toole Lot.

“When they start offering rates at a third of what the private sector is doing and don’t bear any of the costs that we do, such as real-estate taxes, that’s tremendously unfair,” he said. “It would be nice if everyone had to play fair.”

One downtown parking lot operator has had enough, and filed a claim last week seeking damages against the city.

Leon Woodward, who owns U.S. Parking Systems and filed the claim, said the city’s lower-rate pricing damages his business and has cost him 45 customers a month over the past year. As a result, he’s seeking $32,400 in lost revenue for that time period.

City Attorney Mike Rankin considers Woodward’s claim somewhat tenuous.

“Based on my initial review, I don’t believe that USPS has any legal basis for a claim of damages against the city,” Rankin wrote in an email.

Rankin said the Toole Lot is scheduled to undergo improvements in the near future and that a contract is already in place, but Woodward said the city’s been saying for years that the lot is only for the short term.

Years ago, it was slated to become part of a larger transit hub on the east side of downtown, but those plans fell through. These days, it’s a part of the Ronstadt Transit Center redevelopment plan, for which the City Council is seeking private developers.

Woodward said his issue is larger than just lost revenue.

“The city can say it’s just temporary parking,” Woodward said, “but the problem is they are inventing new zoning laws just for themselves.”

When most workers retire before they are Medicare-eligible at 65, they have to bear the costs of health insurance on their own.

But not if you work for Tucson.

Like most governments, the city picks up costs for its retired employees’ health insurance.

Last year, the city paid $15.4 million in direct and indirect health-insurance costs for its 1,350 pre-Medicare-eligible retirees and widows of retirees.

Of that total, $9.6 million went to subsidize retirees’ health plans. The remainder was what the city calculates it pays in increased premiums to carry the additional, older members on its plan.

Current employees must also shoulder more in health-insurance costs to cover the retirees who share in the same plan.

Chief Financial Officer Kelly Gottschalk said blending retirees and active employees in the same insurance pool lowers the cost for retirees while increasing the costs on current employees.

“The active employees are subsidizing the retirees,” she said.

The city has not calculated how much less current employees would pay if retirees were either dropped or put on a separate plan.

Governments have long offered more generous health and retirement benefits to offset lower wages and attract talent from the private sector, said professor Marjorie Baldwin, a health economist at Arizona State University’s W.P. Carey School of Business.

But that was before skyrocketing health-care costs and dwindling budgets.

Baldwin said health-care costs will only rise as baby boomers get older and place more demands on the health-care system.

She said governments might be able to get by in the short term with the same level of benefits, but something will eventually have to give.

“It’s not sustainable, and people are going to have to accept some cuts in their benefits,” Baldwin said, “or cities or counties or states just aren’t going to be able to afford it.”

BIG LIABILITY

The city owes around $239 million for both current and future retiree health-insurance benefits.

Unlike the pension funds, where there are some assets backing future obligations, the city uses a pay-as-you-go model to fund its retiree insurance.

Each year, the city calculates what it owes in a current year and pays it. The rest is an unfunded liability.

University of Arizona finance professor Michael Bond said the pay-as-you-go approach means there’s no money from investments the city could use to cover the annual cost.

So when costs rise, the money likely comes from the existing pot, Bond said, and that translates into less for roads, parks and public safety.

It’s a significant strain on an already overburdened budget.

But there is some hope.

While pension promises can’t be undone, the city does have wiggle room on retiree health-insurance plans.

City Attorney Mike Rankin said the city isn’t legally required to maintain retiree medical benefits at a certain level, and could make changes if it wants.

The city has adjusted its benefit in the past. It used to cover 75 percent of a plan for retirees, but changed to a flat rate for those who retire after January 2011.

Gottschalk said the change saves money, but also that there are still plenty of retirees who qualify for the 75 percent subsidy who haven’t reached Medicare eligibility.

Even when those employees leave, the city will still be kicking in up to $475 a month for retired employees’ health insurance.

A few years ago, the city attempted to create a separate health plan for retirees and active employees, but it was shelved after employee groups protested.

In 2010, Pima County stopped paying for its retirees’ health insurance.

Since county employees are part of the state retirement system, they have the option of joining the state’s health-insurance plan.

The county saved around $13.5 million the first year alone.

City Manager Richard Miranda said the city doesn’t have any plans to change retiree health insurance this year.

After largely ignoring a homeless camp on the western edge of the burgeoning downtown entertainment district for three months, city officials say it’s time to shut it down — weeks before the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show hits town.

The camp at Veinte de Agosto Park, with its up to 50 residents and assorted boxes of belongings, offers a stark contrast to the picture painted by city and civic leaders when they extol the revitalized downtown.

Downtown merchants have grown weary of the situation. They complained to the city about aggressive panhandling and other unruliness to no avail, until Friday, when the City Manager’s Office said it directed the area be cleared to prepare for the gem show.

Those at the camp, at West Congress and South Church Avenue, said they just want a safe place to sleep.

Until this weekend, Tucson Police Department officers have just monitored the activity of those who sprawl out nightly along the sidewalk between two streetcar stops and the site of a city information booth for next month’s gem show.

While officers will arrest people who violate the law, as long as a person leaves enough space for pedestrians to cross, they’re allowed to sit or lie on the sidewalk, said Lt. Maria Hawke, downtown division patrol commander.

“We will always address crime as it occurs,” Hawke said. “In respect to the homeless or anyone else who’s been frequenting that location, we’re not targeting them.”

On the advice of the City Attorney’s Office, TPD has allowed people to sleep on the sidewalks and has arrested only those who violate laws such as drinking in public, drug use or violent crimes.

Hawke said crime had not “spiked” since the people started gathering at the park.

But on Friday, in an email response to a Star question about the park, the manager’s office said that while TPD has exercised discretion and let the homeless sleep on the sidewalk, it was directing the department to start clearing out the park.

The email noted the city code allows people to gather in the sidewalk area and exercise First Amendment rights as long as they do not obstruct the sidewalk areas, but it also says they “cannot sit or lay down in the sidewalk area between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m.”

The email says: “Homeless individuals will be advised of available resources that will help address their current needs such as shelters, food and health care. After this process is completed, the park will be secured and prepared for the programming planned for the gem show.”

City Manager Richard Miranda was not available Friday to comment on why his office waited more than 100 days to ask TPD to clear the park even though the email said the office was aware of downtown businesses, workers and visitors complaining about aggressive panhandling and litter.

The email also said a number of people had told city workers they were reluctant to walk on the sidewalk in front of the park because of the homeless gathered there.

TPD officials couldn’t confirm if they received the order as of Friday evening.

HOW did IT HAPPEN?

The camp started about three months ago when former Occupy Tucson member Jon McLane, 30, decided to address what he considers a serious issue afflicting the area’s homeless.

“The big thing that we saw with the whole Occupy movement was between the hours of 10:30 p.m. and 7 a.m. there is nowhere in the city of Tucson where people have the legal right to sleep,” said McLane, who is homeless and stays at the park.

So he and his group, Occupy Public Land, started the Safe Park Project Oct. 1.

“I guess more or less they allowed us to start sleeping there on the sidewalk at Veinte de Agosto,” he said.

Since then, the park has become a refuge for folks who don’t fit in at a traditional shelter, many of which have strict rules. McLane accuses them of accepting only the “cream of the homeless population.”

“They don’t let in the people who, over the course of their life, made a lot of bad decisions, or have serious mental health or drug issues, and need a lot of work to get back to what we would consider regular,” he said. “The shelters in Tucson are not there to be a fix.”

A group of business people, social service providers, police and city representatives have been meeting with McLane and others over the past month to hash out a resolution.

“There’s very intense focus on this issue,” said Michael Keith, CEO of the Downtown Tucson Partnership. “But it’s a very complicated social issue … so it’s going to take time.”

The group is creating a pamphlet to identify all the social services and shelters available in the downtown area.

Keith hopes if some of the occupants are made aware of what’s available, they might get off the street.

Merchants would like to see the city take care of the matter, Keith said.

McLane said city officials have ignored the plight of the homeless for too long, and the park serves as a grassroots solution.

“We’re trying to fill a gap where one exists,” he said. “And what you’re seeing at Safe Park is the first steps in trying to fill that gap.”

He said they would continue to use the park until the city comes up with alternative solutions.

Last week, McLane said, the group submitted an application for a vendor’s license to sell arts and crafts created by park occupants, which he said would provide people with a sense of purpose and offer them some constructive activities.

One of the ultimate goals, he said, is to earn enough money to operate a 24-hour community center of their own within the city.

The city’s Planning and Development Services Department director, Ernie Duarte, said his office has yet to receive any application.

More than 1,000 Tucson businesses could still be paying an expired tax on their buildings, not realizing the levy was abolished last year.

In 2013 the Arizona Legislature adopted a law prohibiting cities from collecting a 2.5 percent commercial lease tax on a business that leases a building from itself — something that often happens when a business owns a building under one corporate name and operates one or more separately incorporated businesses there.

City officials estimated 1,312 Tucson businesses could qualify for the exemption. So far only 195 have come forward and received the tax break.

If all the estimated businesses took the exemption, it would result in $1.2 million in lost revenue annually for the city. Last year, the city collected $14.8 million from the commercial lease tax.

City officials say they have tried to notify businesses, but so far few have responded.

Though the city will lose revenue, finance officials hope businesses claim the exemption sooner rather than later.

“We have no way of knowing who qualifies. The only way we know is if they come to us,” said Chief Finance Officer Kelly Gottschalk. “We have been putting the word out because I’m afraid people won’t realize it” until years later.

If that happens, the city could wind up repaying millions of dollars in tax refunds, placing further strains on its budget.

A person can claim a refund up to four years after the tax was paid.

Investor and developer Richard Studwell said businesses haven’t signed up in droves because governments have been slow to announce it.

“Nobody has made an effort to get it out there,” Studwell said.

Studwell applied for an exemption on one of his properties, but said he was denied because his partial ownership of the building didn’t meet the legal requirements.

The law, which took effect in July, used to apply only to corporations, said Steve Bosse, state and local tax expert with BeachFleischman, but the Legislature expanded it to include all other business types.

“A lot of people weren’t able to capitalize on the exemption before because people just don’t set up corporations that often,” Bosse said.

“You have a lot of LLCs renting to each other that are owned by the same individual,” he said. The way the old exemption was written, he said, “was discriminatory because it only allowed corporations, whereas with the change it opens it up to a lot more individuals” as long as they share 80 percent common ownership.

Bosse said it’s common for businesses to set up their buildings under a different entity as a precaution.

“It’s for asset protection purposes,” Bosse said. “If there is a lawsuit filed against an operating entity or they ran into other issues, the building would at least be protected from any legal” actions.”

So far, Bosse’s company has counseled about 50 companies on the change.

Bosse said the savings can be significant for businesses if they qualify for the 2.5 percent tax.

Tucson could lose out on nearly $3 million in fees it charges new developments because it is so far behind schedule in making state-mandated changes to its impact-fee regulations.

The new requirements were enacted three years ago to give cities and counties ample time to meet the August 2014 deadline for having them in place.

City officials don’t expect to have Tucson’s plan in place before Christmas, which means the fees cannot be collected for any new developments that pull permits from Aug. 1 until the plan takes effect.

The city’s loss could turn into an $8,000 or more windfall for people who buy homes during that window of opportunity, if homebuilders choose to pass the savings on to their customers.

Last year the city took in $7 million in impact fees during the 2012-13 fiscal year. If building continues at the same pace, that would mean more than $2.9 million in lost revenue. If building picks up with the economy, the hit to city coffers would be larger.

David Godlewski, president of the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association, said the city should seize this opportunity to attract some of the development it has missed out on over the years.

“They should use this as an economic-stimulus tool and try to recruit builders to come build in the city of Tucson,” Godlewski said. “The resulting sales-tax revenue and the jobs created out of the construction projects would be a positive boost for the city.”

Godlewski said Tucson charges between $7,000 and $8,000 in impact fees for the average 1,800- to 2,200-square-foot new home. For a larger 3,000- square-foot home, the figure jumps to nearly $10,000 .

Cities collect one-time impact fees to offset the strain that new homes and businesses can place on city services. Tucson assesses impact fees for parks, roads and public-safety services.

For years, developers across the state complained that cities were using the fees to pay for items unrelated to actual development impacts such as police helicopters, equestrian facilities or existing buildings where city vehicles are stored and maintained.

In 2011, the Legislature adopted a law forcing cities to change the way they charge impact fees to new developments, a change critics say was a cobbled- together, last-second gift to Arizona’s homebuilder lobbyists.

Andrew McGuire, an attorney with the Gust Rosenfeld firm, said instead of the different groups sitting down and working something out that benefited both cities and developers, the state just copied parts of laws from Texas, Nevada and New Mexico, and pasted them together.

McGuire, who has worked with cities over the past few years on implementing the requirements, said cities invested a tremendous amount of time and effort as they figured out the law’s requirements.

But Godlewski said the law just aligned Arizona with other states in the Southwest.

CITY DELAY

City Manager Richard Miranda attributed the delay to the law’s complexity.

“The legislation itself is very complex. It’s very detailed. It required a lot of issues that had to be looked at,” Miranda said. “The cumbersomeness of the legislation has required us to take a little bit more time than we expected.”

The City Manager’s Office put Lynne Birkinbine, the city’s infrastructure planning manager, in charge of making the impact-fee changes in September 2013.

Since the city was already behind, Birkinbine fast-tracked the hiring of a consulting firm to perform the state-mandated survey to determine Tucson’s growth patterns and how they might affect services.

The firm was hired in November, and its first report was posted last Friday.

The city must now hold public hearings on the results. The first two are in June and July.

When those are complete, the city will need to hold additional public hearings on the fee changes.

Once the City Council adopts a final plan, state law requires a 75-day waiting period before it can go in effect.

Since the city is still in the early stages of the process, it’s uncertain how developers, business groups and others will view the proposed changes, Birkinbine said.

She said everything is in draft form and is likely to change as folks start weighing in .

Godlewski said his group wants to ensure government fees don’t price some people out of the market.

“We understand the importance of parks and streets,” Godlewski said. “We’re just making sure it doesn’t become an undue burden on developers and, ultimately, the buyers.”

The projected December deadline is a best-case scenario, Birkinbine said. Any objections from developers or others could stall it even longer.

Councilman Steve Kozachik said Tucson will “stick out like a sore thumb” this summer when it misses the deadline.

“We have known the deadline for two years,” Kozachik said. “Beginning on Aug. 1, we can no longer collect impact fees to help pay for public infrastructure because we screwed up and didn’t get the work done in a timely manner.” He blamed the City Manager’s Office for the failure.

EXPERIENCES VARY

Other cities had various experiences with the law change.

Some show it can be a drawn-out process.

Greg Westrum, city of Chandler budget manager, said it took Chandler about 18 months to complete the process.

Chandler’s City Council is expected to vote on a final draft soon, and its plan is to go into effect in late July.

But others had an easier time.

Phoenix cleaned up its impact fee plan shortly after the law changed and had a new one in place on Jan. 1, 2012, said Alan Stephenson, Phoenix’s acting planning and development department director.

It didn’t take Laura Balis long to understand the risk of riding her bike along Tucson’s modern streetcar tracks.

Balis was pedaling along East University Boulevard near the University of Arizona with a friend in January when a car suddenly stopped in front of them, forcing the two bicyclists to veer around the vehicle and cross the tracks at an odd angle.

She made it across the first track, but couldn’t traverse the second one, which caught her tire. She fell, and severely injured her elbow.

“It was the first time I had ridden that way,” she said. “I’ve avoided the area since then.”

Balis’ incident is one of 86 crashes documented on a survey compiled by the Living Streets Alliance, which promotes making streets more friendly to bicyclists and walkers. The crashes reported on the survey – which began August 2012 – occurred as cyclists tried to ride alongside or cross the tracks.

The nonscientific, self-reported survey includes the cause and location of each crash, the severity of injuries, and the experience level of the bicyclist.

Living Streets Alliance officials say their database likely reflects a small fraction of actual bike crashes along the streetcar route. Most people don’t report their injuries or falls, especially if they’re minor, said Ian Johnson, an Alliance board member.

The city doesn’t track streetcar-related bicycle crashes, which led the Alliance to create the survey. The group hopes it serves as a tool to help the city identify and fix hazardous areas along the route, as well as bring this issue to the public’s attention, Johnson said.

The issue has already sparked a debate regarding whether cars, bikes and the streetcar can coexist along the route, especially in the North Fourth Avenue shopping district, where bikes have to compete with parked cars and delivery trucks.

“This is the most heavily used corridor in the city,” Johnson said. “Bikes have always been here and will always be here.”

crash statistics

Most of the crashes tracked in the survey occurred near three areas: the Fourth Avenue underpass at Toole Avenue, Fourth Avenue and University Boulevard, and the Main Gate Square area outside of the University of Arizona.

More than 40 percent of riders crossed the tracks at a bad angle and almost 30 percent encountered an obstacle in the lane, ranging from stopped cars and pedestrians to construction fences.

Other crashes were caused by evasive maneuvers to avoid sudden hazards, such as a car stopping abruptly or a person darting into the street. A small percentage of crashes were caused by wet tracks and bike riders not noticing artificial traffic devices such as chicanes.

Only 4 percent of those who crashed their bicycles emerged unscathed. About 65 percent of the injuries reported were minor scrapes and bruises, while 26 percent were broken bones and other major injuries. Injuries ranged from chipped teeth and gashes on riders’ arms and legs, to broken wrists and collarbones.

Balis, a triathlete, broke her elbow and had to wear a sling for a couple of weeks.

City officials have taken certain measures to ensure the safety of bicyclists, especially on Fourth Avenue and University. They built streetcar stops in the center of the street to prevent congestion, painted green street markings to guide cyclists over the tracks, put up signs warning bike riders of the tracks and mounted a safety education campaign.

The city is also training streetcar operators to not pass bicyclists, said streetcar Project Manager Shellie Ginn.

Ginn said the city will continue to make changes as needed.

“It’s a new mode of travel in a dense area,” she said. “Everyone has to function differently.”

can they coexist?

Some groups, including the Living Streets Alliance, believe more needs to be done: either remove bike riders or parking spots from Fourth Avenue and other trouble spots.

A recent study from the Urban Land Institute said bikes and streetcar tracks don’t mix and suggested prohibiting bicyclists from riding anywhere along the route. But the city, with input from a citizens panel, pegged the area as a bike route during the early streetcar planning stages and started looking at designs that would allow bikes to ride along the route.

Emily Yetman, executive director of Living Streets Alliance, said the city should place buffers at high accident points and get rid of parking on Fourth Avenue.

“Right design invites right use,” Yetman said.

The city has no plans to remove all on-street parking at any part of the route, but officials might take away spots in trouble areas, Ginn said.

Other cities with streetcar lines have taken various approaches to address bicycle safety along busy streetcar routes.

In Washington, D.C., officials have encouraged bicyclists to use streets adjacent to the streetcar line, which runs along a heavily congested, popular retail and restaurant corridor, said Cherie Gibson, spokeswoman for the D.C. Streetcar.

Portland, Oregon, has taken a variety of approaches, especially along newer portions of its streetcar system, said Dan Bower, executive director of the Portland Streetcar. In certain areas, Portland’s streetcar runs down the left side of its one-way streets and down the center of other streets, away from the bike lanes. Bike lanes were designed to guide bicyclists across the tracks at the correct angles, Bower said.

It comes down to this, he said: Bicyclists shouldn’t have to share space with streetcar tracks.

“Having bikes run parallel to the streetcar is not ideal,” he said.

While the arrival of streetcar service has seemingly given downtown a personality makeover, the long-term economic impact remains an open question.

City officials suggested the streetcar may have already contributed to $930 million in investment downtown — a figure Downtown Tucson Partnership CEO Michael Keith said probably overstates the streetcar’s influence, but clearly demonstrates an economic rebirth downtown.

“The economic impact of the Sun Link Tucson Streetcar continues to grow,” a July 31 city newsletter proclaimed.

“Even though the streetcar began passenger service less than a week ago, economic development along the 3.9-mile route has been heavy since voters approved the streetcar and RTA plan back in 2006,” the newsletter reported, citing $930 million in public and private investment along the streetcar route.

The figures are from a survey Keith started compiling in 2010 as a way to gauge how downtown was growing. They include $570 million in public investment and $360 million in private investment.

The public numbers comprise city, county and Rio Nuevo projects downtown since 2008, such as the $38.8 million Fire Department headquarters and $1.2 million in facade work on the old Walgreens building.

Keith said that while the streetcar has been a boon for downtown, it can’t be considered responsible for some of the projects since they predate it.

Many of the projects are part of the 1999 Rio Nuevo plan approved by voters, or were approved by the City Council well before the 2006 election that authorized funding and construction of the streetcar line.

Also, at $197 million, the streetcar itself makes up about 35 percent of the survey’s public investment portion.

Keith compiled the private investment by talking to new businesses that sprouted up around the downtown area since 2008.

Since the numbers are self-reported by individual businesses, they could be higher or lower, but they offer a ballpark figure of what the private sector has contributed to downtown, Keith said.

Keith’s survey includes the entire downtown area, not just along the streetcar route. The boundaries range from Sixth Avenue in the north to 18th Street in the south, and Grande Avenue in the west to Second Avenue in the east.

Some of the major pieces of public investment in downtown cited in the survey:

Project: County Courthouse

Cost: $98.5 million

Streetcar proximity: Roughly three blocks north of the streetcar stop at Stone Avenue and Congress Street.

Genesis: Approved as part of 2004 county bond.

While cursory studies on a new courthouse date to 1997, it wasn’t until voters approved a $76 million bond to fund a joint city-county complex that plans moved forward.

The courthouse will open in February 2015.

Project: Martin Luther King Apartments and Depot Plaza Garage

Cost: $39 million

Streetcar proximity: Adjacent to the route.

Genesis: Part of the city’s 2002 Martin Luther King Jr. Apartments redevelopment plan.

In 2002 the City Council first approved plans to renovate and expand the low-income apartment complex for the elderly and disabled, and add a parking garage and public plaza.

In 2004 the city applied for federal funds for the project, a portion of which was ultimately financed by Rio Nuevo.

Project: Fourth Avenue Underpass/Downtown Links

Cost: $43.3 million for underpass. $27 million for Downtown Links.

Streetcar proximity: Part of the route.

Genesis: Both are part of the city’s 1982 Barraza-Aviation Parkway Project plan.

The City Council approved funding for the parkway, which included plans to tear down the Fourth Avenue underpass, in 1982.

Opposition to tearing down the state’s oldest underpass and funding shortages stalled the underpass modifications for decades.

Originally projected to cost $16 million, myriad design changes, including one in 2006 to accommodate the streetcar, boosted the cost to over $43 million by the time it opened in 2009.

Downtown Links is the continuation of a decades-long effort to find a politically acceptable route to connect the current terminus of the parkway at East Broadway to Interstate 10, which is a requirement of the state funding used to build the road.

Project: Mission Garden/Origins Park

Cost: $23.6 million

Streetcar proximity: About six blocks southwest from the Linda Avenue and Cushing Street stop.

Genesis: Part of the Rio Nuevo plan approved by voters in 1999.

Even though it was part of Rio Nuevo, the project’s origins date to at least 1990, when then-Councilman Steve Leal pushed the idea to reinvigorate downtown and attract tourist dollars.

But it didn’t get moving until it was sold as a re-creation of Tucson’s birthplace as part of the 1999 Rio Nuevo package.

While it was billed as the signature piece of Rio Nuevo, the elaborate plans to build a two-story convento, Hohokam Village pithouses and the Carrillo House never materialized. Most of the money went to cleaning up the landfill, buying property and design work.

Project: Presidio Stabilization and Heritage Park

Cost: $4.4 million

Streetcar proximity: About five blocks northwest of the Church Avenue and Congress Street stop.

Genesis: Part of the Rio Nuevo plan approved by voters in 1999.

The Presidio Wall re-creation, which is at North Church Avenue and West Washington Street, opened in 2007.

A criminal record has always been an albatross for job seekers looking for a second chance.

And now, with an Internet that never forgets a person’s mistakes and background checks commonplace, a conviction can haunt a person for a lifetime.

But those past-life blemishes may soon be less of a burden for someone looking for a job with the city of Tucson, which recently became the first municipality in Arizona to remove questions about criminal history from its online applications.

“We’ve had grandparents who’ve worked for 40 years and then lost their job during the recession. And a new background check prevented them from getting a new job because they had a conviction decades ago,” said Michelle Natividad Rodriguez, an attorney with the National Employment Law Project, a workers rights advocacy group.

Rodriguez’s group, and others, have been lobbying governments across the country for more than a decade to adopt polices reducing barriers to jobs for people with criminal histories so they don’t resort to committing additional crimes.

Interim City Manager Martha Durkin made the decision drop criminal histories from the city’s job application form about a month ago, after meeting with groups such as the William E. Morris Institute for Justice.

Ellen Katz, director of the Phoenix-based institute, said she met with the city in December 2013 and last August to lobby for the changes.

Durkin decided the question was too broad, and it was near the start of the application, which could have dissuaded otherwise qualified applicants from even filling out the rest of the application.

Durkin said the city is also developing a comprehensive plan to ensure the city has fair hiring policies in place. The plan will likely include:

• A decision about when in the hiring process it is appropriate to ask about a criminal history.
• Which positions will require background checks.
• A decision on whether the background check be performed only after a contingent job offer.
• What appeal options should be in place for candidates who are denied employment.

The city currently requires background checks for public safety, jobs with access to sensitive data, and positions that involve handling cash.

It doesn’t require background checks for many entry-level positions that don’t involve private information, money or working with children.

Councilman Richard Fimbres, who requested a discussion about the issue at the council’s next meeting, said the policy changes are a way to give people another crack at becoming productive members of society while possibly saving the city some money.

“With recidivism rates increasing, and the city’s jail bed cost rising, the city must look at all efforts to deal with these situations,” Fimbres wrote in an email.

Last fiscal year the city paid $7.3 million in jail expenses.

Callbacks fall by half

Across the United States, 2.3 million people are behind bars and an additional 7.3 million are under some form of supervision. In Arizona, 42,000 people are incarcerated with roughly 5,900 people under supervision.

The National Employment Law Project estimates 70 million people nationwide have a conviction or an arrest, both of which Rodriguez said have led to people losing out on jobs.

Studies have shown a criminal history can decrease callbacks for jobs by 50 percent on average, she said.

In Tucson, placing someone with a criminal history in a job can take weeks or months longer than someone with a clean history, said Debbi Embry, president & CEO Tucson Urban League, which assists low-income families and individuals.

“And that’s because of the box that’s there,” Embry said. “It’s an upfront barrier” to a job.

Critics fear removing criminal-history questions from applications and forgoing some background checks could result in sex offenders working with kids, and other hardened criminals obtaining jobs where they can exploit the vulnerable.

But Rodriguez said the policy change isn’t going to allow the worst criminals in society access to kids or sensitive information.

She said it’s to enact policies where employers judge a candidate on his or her merits and not past missteps.

“It’s trying to show people as they are — complicated individuals who make mistakes,” Rodriguez said.

When to ask

So far, 13 states and about 70 cities have adopted some type of reform, some sweeping, others modest adjustments, ranging from prohibiting the question on from appearing on application forms to outright bans or limits on both government and private employers asking or doing background checks for many positions.

Katz said the preferred option is for cities to wait until they offer conditional employment before they ask about criminal history or perform background checks.

She also recommended cities provide an way for applicants to protest or explain a background check’s result since many can contain errors.

Councilman Steve Kozachik said the city should tread lightly when it comes to implementing any changes.

“We’re all sensitive to wanting people to be given a totally fair shot when they’re out applying for work,” Kozachik said.

“But we can’t overstep on this. There are times when any employer has the right to conduct background checks to make sure the people they’re hiring aren’t security risks.”

Tucsonans are significantly safer than they were 20 years ago. Their property? Not so much.

Despite falling crime rates both nationally and locally, the community still has a major blemish on its public-safety résumé when it comes to thefts, burglaries, arsons and auto thefts.

The recently released FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2013 shows the Tucson region has the 10th-highest property-crime rate among metropolitan areas with at least 100,000 people.

Like most of the country, property crime here is down. But it has not fallen nearly as much as it has in most other communities.

The Tucson area’s property-crime rate is 4,849 per 100,000 residents. The national average for metro areas of more than 100,000 people is 2,730 per 100,000 residents.

At its peak in the mid-1990s, Tucson’s property-crime rate hit 8,892 per 100,000 residents — then nearly double the national average.

One factor that plays into the region’s high property-crime rate is the highly transient population.

“It’s not just moving in or out, it’s also that population moving within a metropolitan area, like Tucson, certainly has something to do with property crimes,” said Scott Decker, foundation professor at Arizona State University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

The Tucson region is highly transient. The average Tucsonan moves every 3.5 years, compared to the national average of 5.2 years, data from the Pima Association of Governments show.

Over 80 percent of renters have lived at their present address less than 18 months, PAG data shows.

“The issue for population mobility is it makes it more difficult for people to know their neighbors,” Decker said. “It makes it more difficult for people to know what’s normal for a neighborhood; who belongs there and who doesn’t and who might be up to no good. When there’s a lot of mobility, those things are more difficult to get a handle on.”

While property crime remains high when compared to other regions, it is down significantly, largely because of the dramatic drop in auto thefts. In 1995, the region reported more than 7,450 auto thefts. By 2013, that figure had fallen to 3,030.

VIOLENT CRIME DECLINES

Along with auto theft, the FBI calculates property crime by compiling instances of burglary, larceny-theft and arson.

Sgt. Pete Dugan of the Tucson Police Department said modern anti-theft devices on newer cars have made it more difficult for thieves to steal them. Larceny and burglary also have been on the decline.

Like property crime, the rate of violent crime also has declined almost annually since the 1990s. The FBI compiles stats on murder and non-negligent manslaughter, rape, robbery and aggravated assault to calculate violent crime.

There’s no single reason to account for the drop in violent crime. Various studies point to an improving economy, more concealed-weapons laws, gun-control regulation, more police, higher incarceration rates and changing demographics.

“It’s a complicated story with no easy answer,” ASU’s Decker said.

He said smarter policing and prisons certainly accounted for a portion of the drop.

“It’s not just locking people up. It’s about who you lock up,” he said. “It’s about using prison for the most crime-prone groups. It has more to do with smart sentencing than locking people up.”

One of the biggest factors for the decline is an aging population, Decker said.

“The percent of the population that you have between 18 to 30 years old makes a big difference,” he said.

The Tucson region’s population has been growing slightly older over the past 15 years. In 2000, the median age in the region was 35. By the 2010 Census, the median age had increased to 37.

“We’re an aging country,” Pima County sheriff’s Chief Deputy Chris Nanos said. “And the least likely group to be involved in crime is the elderly.”

In addition to infrequent forays into crime, the elderly are also more engaged with their neighborhood and community, Nanos said. He pointed to areas such as Saddlebrooke and Green Valley as examples.

“Because they get involved with their communities, that reflects in their low crime rates,” Nanos said. “If you have any community involved in a problem, crime drops.”

REALITIES, GOOD AND BAD

The connection between crime and immigration has been the subject of much speculation.

Despite rhetoric surrounding immigration and crime, Decker said the numbers show that higher populations of Hispanics correlate to lower crime rates.

Areas with higher Hispanic populations, such as the Southwest, tend to experience fewer crimes than Eastern or Midwest cities, he said.

While the continued drop in crime rates has been a welcome trend, crime still is an issue that has raised concerns among the region’s business community.

Mike Varney, president and CEO of the Tucson Metro Chamber, said crime turned up as a main concern in a study the group plans to release next week.

“Crime was a straight negative across the board,” in the chamber’s “Community Quality Report Card,” Varney said.

When the region has crime rates above the national average, it creates a more difficult environment for businesses to thrive. But Varney said the chamber believes that improving the regional economy would in the long run help reduce crime.

This year’s crime report was the first of the FBI’s annual reports since 2005 that included data on the property crimes for the city of Tucson or the metro area.

For seven years, reports left categories for larceny and property crime blank for Tucson, with a notation stating: “The FBI determined that the agency did not follow national Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program guidelines for reporting an offense.”

During that seven-year gap, the Tucson Police Department reported property crime in a way the FBI did not recognize. Adjustments have been made to account for those crimes, although TPD officials did not respond to a request late last week to explain their changes.

Tucson City Councilwoman Karin Uhlich no longer lives in the ward she represents, which could put her in violation of state law regarding residency requirements for elected officials.

Uhlich, who represents the midtown Ward 3, switched her voter registration on April 29 to a house near East Tanque Verde and North Pantano roads. The house is in the city’s Ward 2.

Uhlich bought the home at the beginning of the year, Pima County Recorder’s Office documents show.

City Attorney Mike Rankin said Uhlich is on safe ground as long as she remains a city resident — whether or not she lives in her elected ward. But state law may not be so clear-cut.

Arizona law says that whenever an elected official stops being a resident of the “district, county, city, town or precinct” where he or she was elected, that seat becomes vacant. But Rankin said that doesn’t apply to Uhlich’s situation because Tucson’s council is elected citywide. However, he said, people can be nominated to represent only the ward in which they live to be eligible to advance to a city general election.

Tucson’s City Charter requires council candidates to live within the city limits for three years and says specifically they must live in their ward for one year before qualifying for the ballot.

The charter says only that a council member can’t relocate outside the city while serving, Rankin said.

A candidate would have to move back into the ward where he or she plans to run one year before the election, he said. In this case, Uhlich would have to return to the ward she represents in 2016.

She decided not to wait. She changed her voter registration address again on Sept. 3, this time to an apartment near East Glenn Street and North Columbus Boulevard, within her Ward 3.

Uhlich said she bought the east-side home because her family was going through a transition. “My intent was to focus on my family,” Uhlich said.

Despite the move, Uhlich said she never had intentions of abandoning Ward 3 or relinquishing her office. She said she has continued to be connected to the ward and its issues.

While she spoke casually with Rankin and others about the potential consequences of relocating, Uhlich said she relied mainly on her reading of the city charter and a “gut-check” to ultimately decide on the move.

With the August primary approaching, Uhlich switched her voting registration to her new address because she didn’t want to cast a vote in a ward in which she no longer lived. She also already had rented the house she still owns within the ward.

“I’m very committed to being open and transparent,” Uhlich said. “I’m not going to pretend I live somewhere when I don’t.”

Uhlich rented the apartment in early September and shortly thereafter changed her voting address to that location.

“It has made sense to have that,” Uhlich said. “It was the right decision and it will be made use of both related to my Ward 3 work, but also to my family.”

Uhlich said her family has used the apartment, and she did not rent it strictly to maintain an address in the ward.

“It’s important for me and my family right now to have things arranged exactly as they are,” she said. “I’m following what my family needs first and foremost, and my service and loyalty to Ward 3, and the city, remains real clear.”

MURKY regulations

State law is clear on what can trigger a vacancy, said Tom Belshe, deputy director of the League of Arizona Cities and Towns, which publishes a primer for council members on municipal government rules.

However, what qualifies as a permanent departure from a city or ward’s boundaries isn’t as cut and dried, Belshe said.

In the past, state law was silent on who gets to determine what constituted a vacancy. So cities decided for themselves or lawsuits would get filed contesting an elected official or candidate’s residency claims.

But a recent state law puts that authority in the hands of a county attorney’s office, Belshe said. State law doesn’t specify who can file a complaint to a county attorney, he said.

The league’s packet for local officials interprets the law as saying a vacancy exists when a council member leaves the ward in which he or she was elected.

Rankin says that applies to cities with ward-only elections. If the city operated on a ward-only election, Uhlich’s move might have been a problem, Rankin said.

Rankin referenced a 1994 Arizona Court of Appeals decision that ousted a board member of the Yavapai Community College District for moving out of his elected precinct.

In that case, the court drew a distinction between a precinct-only and districtwide election. It determined that, since the election was precinct-only, the board member vacated his seat by relocating.

Even if the city did go to ward-only elections, which the city’s charter review committee may soon consider, it’s likely that the charter change would specify that council members must continue living in their wards during the terms, Rankin said.

TOUGH SELL

Proving that someone doesn’t live in the city or ward where he or she serves or is running for office has been a difficult proposition.

That is mostly because officials in question maintained a home or apartment within those legal borders that they could claim as their primary residence. And courts tend to take candidates at their word.

“It’s not an extraordinarily high threshold to declare a primary residence,” Rankin said.

Sometimes a judge would throw a politician out of office, such as what happened to former Nogales Mayor Mary Macias in 1989.

But most often the accused politicians win out, such as when former City Councilman Roger Sedlmayr claimed a residence and kept a voter registration address within the boundaries where he was elected.

Others who have survived residency challenges are former City Council members Bruce Wheeler, Roy Laos and Robert Cauthorn; Pima County Supervisor E.S. Walker; and former U.S. Rep. Morris K. Udall.

Even if an elected official’s move is found to be in violation of state law, the consequences are unclear.

The state constitution doesn’t address what should be done if an elected official becomes unqualified yet continues to serve, said Rodolfo Espino, assistant professor of political science at Arizona State University.

It also offers no advice on what happens to the votes an elected official cast once he or she was no longer eligible to serve, Espino said.