The three-year project to build a new 22nd Street bridge, an RTA project, is set to begin by the end of February. Full closure of the bridge is expected to begin March 3.
Why the RTA matters
Props 418 and 419 ask voters a simple but important question: Do we still believe in regional solutions when local systems are under strain?
The Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) was created for a reason. No single city or jurisdiction can meet Pima County’s transportation needs alone. Roads, transit corridors, freight routes, and safety improvements don’t stop at city limits, and neither do the people who rely on them every day.
Look around. The City of Tucson is struggling to keep up with basic infrastructure demands. Deferred maintenance, limited resources, and competing priorities are visible across the community. The first RTA delivered significant roadway improvements, new transit investments, safer intersections, bikeways, sidewalks, and walking paths that made our region more connected. Where would our community be without these and other such improvements?
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Props 418 and 419 continue that pragmatic approach. Regional challenges require regional solutions. Voting YES on 418 and 419 means choosing safety and a future that works for the entire region, not just parts of it.
Si Schorr
Midtown
Lest we forget the Bipartisan Border Bill
Prior to the 2024 election, Congress had created a bipartisan bill to deal with immigration within the framework of the US Constitution. Candidate Trump ordered the GOP to kill it, and they obliged as they always do. Apparently, Trump had a better idea that would involve the shooting deaths of American citizens who might complain. There were American casualties to his early denial of COVID during the first term, too. Here we are again.
Ed Waymire
Midtown
Accuracy and compassion
A frequent writer presenting ICE actions as absolutely legal is absolutely false. Same goes for saying ICE targets rapists, murderers and abusers. Simply not true.
If heinous conduct was done in the U.S., try and incarcerate them where the crimes were committed. ICE could deport them from prison. If not done here, what is the basis for thinking it is true? Because ICE or Fox News said so? Based on its investigation, has ICE ever actually found and deported a rapist or abuser?
The writer implies all illegals are rapists, abusers and murderers, which is clearly wrong.
Concern and compassion for women and children being raped or abused does not preclude concern for U.S. citizens killed by ICE. It is not an a) or b) issue.
Compassion is not shown by deporting a rapist to continue such activity vs. bringing that criminal to justice with closure for the victims?
Clarence Johnson
Oro Valley
Third time's a charm?
Donald Trump’s unceasing campaign to rewrite the 2020 presidential elections has raised a curious dichotomy in my mind, to wit: All concede that Trump won the 2016 election. He also won the 2024 election. If he were to be successful in his efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 elections, this would mean that he was elected three times as president. The 22nd Amendment, Section 1, to the Constitution clearly states, in part, that “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice….” If what Trump claims is true, i.e., that he was elected president in 2020, doesn't that mean he was previously elected twice and was thus ineligible to run for office in 2024? Ergo, he cannot be our legally elected president now? Note: Amendment 22 doesn't say that the person had to serve, merely that he/she cannot be elected more than twice. Am I missing something, or is he?
Cheryl Loughran
Sierra Vista
Who I'll vote for
I'm 91 and have voted in every election since I registered as a Republican in 1956. Since then, I've voted for candidates for president and members of Congress from both parties. In 2008, I got disgusted with what the Republican Party had become and changed my registration to Democrat. Since then, I've voted pretty much for Democrats. In the upcoming election, I will vote for any candidate of any party who will admit that our current president is hell-bent on setting up his own military dictatorship and has the guts to oppose him.
Tom Henderson
West side
No on RTA Next: Demand better
Voters, if we have the courage to vote NO on RTA Next we have the opportunity to stop the insanity of this heat island we keep building. If Props 418 and 419 pass, Tucson will shoulder the most cost for the least return, and no, RTA Next will not fix the current streets and potholes (maintenance).
Remember, too, this plan does involve a tax. While it is an extension of an existing tax, shouldn’t we demand a better return?
Only ~60% of RTA projects promised to the taxpayers of Pima County have been completed. So much was not fully funded or finished from the promise of 20 years ago, and now they want us to lock in for another 20 years. Why should we accept this?
Tucson can and should demand better for everyone. We need to defeat Props 418/419 and get a more sustainable plan for Tucson in place.
Imagine the Tucson you want, not the Tucson you are told you must have by those with money.
Carissa Sipp
Midtown
Fork in the road
Star reporter Charles Borla chronicled the recent Tucson protest of federal government policing here and elsewhere. Not a word about traffic disruption in the heart of our city and the cost involved were reported. Selective signs were quoted, those with profanities unmentioned. Borla raised the political temperature by highlighting fringe inflammatory quotes and inserting a link to a protest website in the electronic edition.
Progressive Democrat cities, Tucson and Minneapolis are both about the same size. This is a fork in the road; do we choose to escalate?
My hope is that Mayor Romero calls on our community to obey all federal, state and local law enforcement officials as they perform their lawful duties.
This political conservative can only dream.
Jeffrey McConnell
West side
Extension
I am advising clients to file Federal Form 4868 for the automatic 6-month extension for filing that concurrently provides a 6-month extension for Arizona individual tax return filing.
Arizona requires 90% tax due to be paid by April 15. If needed, estimated state tax can be paid at www.aztaxes.gov/Home/PaymentIndividual/.
If the Federal return is complete by April 15, it can be filed without filing the Arizona. Most tax software allows selection of which returns to e-file.
When the Arizona tax return issues are resolved, the software should update within a couple of weeks. Save a pdf file of the original return to compare to the updated return. If there are no changes, either wait and try again later or confirm the software is updated.
Your friendly neighborhood tax guy says, “Beware the nonrefundable tax credit.”
James Abels
Midtown
Enough is enough
A week before the 2024 election, the Economist magazine called the American economy “The Envy of the World.” Now, we are an international joke, and it seems the rioters of January 6, 2020, have found a new home in ICE.
I support and participate in the protests, when my health allows, but it is important to remember the one thing we can do in Tucson is to vote against Juan Ciscomani in November.
Don’t worry about the pork he is bringing home – he is not making those decisions. In fact, the only decision he has ever made has been to make sure all of his decisions align with Donald Trump’s.
Steve Devitt
East side
Re: 'Hearing airs vapor theories'
The tinfoil hat-wearing flat-earthers are out in force once again, advancing legislative offerings aimed at prohibiting those nefarious climate-change scientists from dispersing chemtrails into our skies. How utterly exhausting such devotion to conspiratorial claptrap must be. It's tragic, to be sure, and yet perversely amusing in its way, to behold such unshakeable certainty over such dubious claims espoused with such conviction.
Once one succumbs to accepting the impossible, rejecting the incontestable becomes effortless. If this paranoid contingent could remove their tin hats long enough to use their thinking caps instead, and direct a fraction of the time they’ve invested in nonsense toward assimilating bona fide evidence-based knowledge, they would have no need for these frivolous efforts. Oh, the humanity!
Robert Gavlak
Midtown
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