Local opinion: Why I voted no on Prop 417

What is a city without neighbors? What is a neighborhood without representation? Neighborhood associations offer all the residents of Tucson the chance to be heard.

For some reason, the City of Tucson wants to take neighbors and neighborhood associations out of the decision-making process on issues that affect each and every resident of Tucson.

The state of Arizona requires every city to write a General Plan every 10 years. The City of Tucson is asking you to approve the plan they have assembled to replace Plan Tucson 2013.

The plan we are being asked to vote on has left out neighbors even though it is clearly stated by law that neighbors be written into the plan.

In 2024, one neighborhood had issues with potential development that would affect their area. They had a meeting with the Planning Commission and the applicant. Once the neighbors raised their objections to a proposed plan amendment, the neighbors were ordered to leave the room but the applicant who requested the amendment was allowed to stay. Unknown to the Planning Commission, their discussion was broadcast outside the council chambers, and the neighbors heard city staff state that the City of Tucson was cutting out neighborhood input.

A friend of mine found herself in an elevator with City Council aides. When they asked each other how things were going, both said with pained expressions, “still dealing with constituents’ complaints.”

Just last week, another resident was talking to a city employee about the current Plan Tucson, and the employee remarked the current plan is designed to make it harder for people to organize.

I have heard young urban planners say neighborhood associations are such a pain.

You can call these comments hearsay. I can tell you that the huge issue that affected me and my immediate neighbors is not hearsay. The City of Tucson and Ward 3 received 11 letters from 100% of the affected neighbors stating they did not want a day shelter for homeless men to be reclassified as an Adult Day Care facility and placed as our next door neighbor. No one answered any of our letters. No one in the city stood up for us, the neighbors who have lived here for decades. The city instead listened to people who live out of town, not in the city and many of those not even in the state. Neighbors didn’t count.

Without neighbors and neighborhoods being written into the new Plan Tucson, we will have all our rights stripped away and given to developers. The recent count has 153 Registered Neighborhood Associations and more neighborhoods that have not formed associations.

The current mayor and council have an agenda and all the pesky neighbors are just getting in the way and so we have been written out.

While Plan Tucson 2013 isn’t perfect, it is much better than Plan Tucson 2025. If Prop 417 fail,s Plan Tucson 2013 remains in place and hopefully sends a message to Mayor and Council. We matter, and we expect our elected officials to follow the law.

When they include a goal like the one that promotes arts and culture, even though it’s not a statutory requirement, but leave out Neighborhood Preservation and Neighborhood Revitalization, which is a statutory requirement, they are telling us they just don’t care about us, we don’t matter.

Mayor and Council have declared a housing and homelessness emergency. The Mayor and Council approved a motion asking City staff to return in 45 days with a plan to expand temporary shelter capacity, accelerate permanent, affordable housing, and begin the process to amend the Unified Development Code to remove zoning barriers to shelter care.

They have set up our neighborhoods, especially lower-income neighborhoods, to bear the cost of the nationwide housing crisis. Why aren’t they screaming at the top of their lungs about out-of-state investors or tariffs for the insane increase in rent or construction? Why are they picking on their own citizens?

Neighbors should be the most important feature of Plan Tucson 2025. We deserve better. After all, without us, the City of Tucson would not exist, and the Mayor and Council would be out of their good-paying jobs.