Regina Romero: We must all work together on Tucson's economic development

and analysis of the writer:

Our economic development ecosystem in Southern Arizona is broken. It could not be more evident than over the past few weeks as our community has battled over data centers, water and power use, and Project Blue.

I have been working on economic development issues since I was elected to serve on the City Council in 2007. I led in the creation of the City of Tucson’s Economic Initiatives Office and a Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy for Tucson. I worked alongside Mayor Walkup, Congressman Grijalva, other elected leaders, residents and transportation advocates to bring the streetcar from the University through Downtown across the Santa Cruz River to the Westside. Although not everyone was a fan of the streetcar, in the ten years since its construction, it has created over 1,200 construction jobs, over 1,500 new housing units, 50 new restaurants and businesses and over $4 billion of private investment.

With economic development, the whole community wins or loses — not just one entity or jurisdiction, not just one neighborhood or business organization. Right now, there are so many individual plans, pillars, strategies, agendas and priorities that no one person can explain clearly and easily what our collective vision is as a region. This is to our own detriment. The current system is fragmented and divides us. It is time to bring together a broad coalition of Tucsonans to create a vision for our economic development future.

We need an economic development strategy that works for all of us. We need to make sure that in addition to our current economic development leaders, we include our young leaders, labor union leaders, neighborhood leaders and environmental voices. We need to include our small business leaders and people working in cross-border trade. We need to include our vocational partners and people focusing on workforce development for youth, veterans, and second-career people. Our economic development plan should be created and executed with our whole community and grounded in our shared values. That is what I plan to do.

Tucson has a higher percentage of people living in poverty than Arizona as a whole. When Mayor and Council passed the Prosperity Initiative in 2024, it was with the clear understanding that we need to reduce generational poverty and increase generational wealth.

In January, I applied for and was accepted into the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, with my key priority being economic development. I’ll be working alongside the City Manager to bring this work home to Tucson. We’ll need to structure ongoing, transparent and broad participation from our community as described above to get it right.

Over the next 12 months, I am asking Tucsonans to join me, our academic partners at Pima Community College and the University of Arizona, workers and our labor unions, scientists and climate experts, our partners at Pima County and other jurisdictions, our Indigenous partners, economic development and business leaders, students and families, to create our collective economic development strategy for our shared future.

It is time for us to take the reins and engage with each other. We must figure out what we want to say yes to. We want to move forward together with a strategy that protects our environment and creates prosperity to ensure that we all can thrive in our beautiful, sustainable, desert city with economic opportunity for all.