William Mordka: Tucson in danger of being more rough than diamond

This past week I had the joy of reading about my hometown in a New York Times Travel Section article. It was a great piece that highlighted some of the best things about Tucson.

Whenever an article like this is written a few of my friends/family from across the country will send me the link. Why do they do that? Because they know I love Tucson. I am born and raised here, I love it all: telling people we have Rodeo Break and not President’s Day, that “Can’t Buy Me Love” was filmed at Tucson High & “Revenge of the Nerds” at the UA, and trying to describe a monsoon to a novice.

My family moved here in the ’40s and has been involved in real estate since arrival. I am the proud owner of a 50-year-old Tucson small business. When an article comes out like this it’s a win for the community.

After the article came out, I imagined if I was someone else who just read this NYT article and didn’t know anything about this cool place, what would I do? Of course enter the single word “Tucson” into Google. How disheartening that the search results included an out-of-town visitor who wanted to experience Tucson getting attacked with a hatchet; a man sitting on the corner of Broadway/Wilmot was run over by someone driving too fast; and a victim who was shot and killed at a park.

It was a sad realization that after decades as a Tucson cheerleader, I am morphing into a Tucson apologist.

Mayor Romero, the City Council, and the city staff often champion the phrase “Somos uno!”, translated “we are one,” but it certainly doesn’t feel like that. If you look at Mayor Romero’s X account (Formerly Twitter) you have to go back over a year to April 1, 2024 to see a post that is not associated with a national or state issue, and that post was the death of Tucson Officer Adam Buckner. Over a year of local issues/crimes/challenges that this city has faced and Mayor Romero is silent, but there is a whole year of posts about national/state political races and issues. I am past the point in laying blame against individual political parties, it is not helpful to improving the issues. But if in fact we are “Somos Uno!” then the city leaders need to start acting like it, or they need to not run for office again.

I am not naïve enough to think that we can have a large metropolitan area with no issues, but I think it is fully reasonable to have enough police officers to help reduce the gross amount of dangerous driving on city streets, to have enforcement that prevents vagrants from sitting adjacent to major throughfares, to ensure bicyclists & pedestrians are not afraid of shanty towns along bike paths and walkways, and to allow people to take their children to parks without constant danger.

Maybe instead of planting a million trees we can work on making 100 parks comfortable for kids, making 100 streets safer for commuters, making 100 washes cleaner, 100 bus routes safer for their riders.

One of my favorite things is that Tucson has always been a “diamond in the rough” but if we continue on this trajectory of partisan folly & unobtainable misguided ambitions instead of simple community governance than I worry the rough will be too great for anyone to notice the diamond lying beneath.