Tucson & Pima County leaders trade jabs ahead of joint meeting

City and county leaders are sparring ahead of a rare joint meeting between the Pima County Board of Supervisors and the Tucson City Council.

The meeting, scheduled for Nov. 18, is supposed to bring the region’s two largest governing bodies together to discuss issues related to crime, drug addiction and homelessness.

At this week’s Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting, Chairman Rex Scott took issue with several recent comments by Mayor Regina Romero and said he didn’t want to hear the complaints repeated at the joint meeting.

Last month, when Romero rolled out a new Safe City initiative, she said the city had been spending on housing assistance and other programs for people living on the street, but the biggest challenge has been people who refuse the offered services, whether they are seriously mentally ill, suffering from opioid addiction or some combination of the two.

In a open letter to Tucsonans, Romero pledged to address concerns about safety in Tucson, but also said that many of the problems the city faced were the responsibilities of other jurisdictions, including Pima County.

“The Pima County Health Department is responsible for providing health-related services, such as mental health care and substance use treatment for people in jail, as well as overall public health services for county residents,” Romero said. “These responsibilities do not fall under the responsibility of the city of Tucson per our Charter.”

In an interview with reporters about the Safe City initiative, Romero said the city had asked the county to consider using the Mission Annex, a former jail complex on Mission Road, as a low-barrier shelter for up to 400 people. She also wanted to see the county open its Transition Center – an office outside the jail where those released from jail can find resources if they are seeking services or trying to better understand their legal problems – 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

“We have been working with the Pima County Board of Supervisors and Pima County,” Romero said. “It just seems as though there needs to be urgency to the work. We can’t study this anymore. We’ve observed, we’ve done a gaps analysis. We know what the problem is. We need our partners in other jurisdictions to act.”

Similar complaints were aired at an Oct. 21 City Council meeting, with Romero suggesting the county use opioid lawsuit settlement funding to open the Mission Annex.

Two weeks later, at the Nov. 4 Pima County Board of Supervisors meeting. Democrat Andres Cano, whose District 5 includes the area, said he didn’t appreciate the dismissive attitude of city officials.

Cano, who worked as a lobbyist for the city of Tucson before being appointed to the Board of Supervisors earlier this year, said he had a “sincere commitment” to have the discussion to be “collaborative one focused on joint efforts and how to move forward together. But I think it is important to recognize existing efforts that are already taking place to tackle the use of fentanyl in our community.”

Cano said Romero and members of the City Council were jumping the gun with their suggestions about the Mission Annex, given that the neighborhood already has the county jail alongside “a sexual abuse housing, a sexual offender housing facility that’s managed by the state, the Transition Center. We need some good neighbor mitigation, working with the city of Tucson and the county hand in hand, so that we can provide some benefit to the folks who have, by no choice of their own, have our county facilities as their backyard.”

Scott also took issue with complaints that the county wasn’t doing enough and ran through a long list of the county’s efforts, reading a prepared statement about his concerns with the city’s tone. (See sidebar for the full text.)

“Unfortunately, when Tucson officials introduced their Safe City Initiative and when they had their own vote on joint meetings on Oct. 21, they felt obliged to attack the county, disregarding or mischaracterizing our equally dedicated work to take on these issues,” Scott said. “As the board chair, it is important for me to respond appropriately in instances such as this. The message also needs to be sent that assertions or comments like the ones made by Mayor Romero and some City Council members cannot be repeated when we gather together on Nov. 18. That would detract from the goal of working in harmony to respond to these vital community concerns.”

Scott said the city had delayed work on a plan to spend opioid settlement funds and dragged its feet in funding a portion of Transition Center’s staffing.

Romero didn’t address any of the specifics of Scott’s complaints, but she said his concerns were “misplaced.”

“For more than four years, my council colleagues and I have taken clear and direct action to address the fentanyl crisis plaguing our unsheltered community, in particular,” Romero told the Sentinel. “Chair Scott’s focus at the Board of Supervisors meeting is misdirected. We need to have a frank and honest understanding of what the city and the county are doing and can do for our shared residents. So, my question remains, how will Pima County urgently address the fentanyl crisis in our streets?”

Scott replied that Romero “would do well to remember that the primary reason for my statement was responsive.”

“I look forward to our continued work together, but it is unnecessary for her and some of her colleagues to persist in disregarding our work or in mischaracterizing our efforts,” he continued. “As I said on Tuesday, that is not how we have conducted ourselves in our interactions with the city, but we are not going to be their political punching bag.”

For Scott, it was reminiscent of the City Council’s decision to scuttle a deal to annex land near the county fairgrounds for Project Blue, the controversial planned data center. Romero’s office had been working with the Project Blue team on the deal, but when they voted to reject the annexation, Romero blamed the Board of Supervisors for agreeing to rezone and sell the land to the developer last August.

“This reminds me of when they voted against Project Blue annexation,” Scott said. “You know, they couldn’t just state their reasons. They also had to criticize the county, even though their staff and our staff and quite frankly, their mayor, had been involved in discussions about that project for longer than the county was.”

Scott added that he had been working with Romero since they met through the Metropolitan Education Commission, when she was serving on the City Council and he was a local high school principal representing the Arizona School Administrators. He also worked with her on the RTA Board and has been meeting her monthly since he became chair of the board.

“I think both of us are always going to stand up for the governments that we represent,” Scott said, “but I think we have every possibility of having a positive, harmonious and productive meeting on Nov. 18 and I base that not just on what she and I may bring to that meeting, but what the other four supervisors and the other six members of City Council will bring.”