By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
This November, Tucson voters will decide whether they would like to continue doubling down on Tucson’s failed policies that have invited rampant crime, made it impossible to navigate the city without extreme frustration, and drain its wealth and livability to pursue virtue-signaling but poverty-inducing policies. Or if they would rather get off the merry-go-round of insanity.
Prop 417 is the city’s updated 10-year general plan, and a ‘Yes’ vote continues the madness. A ‘No’ vote on Prop 417 is the only reasonable choice for anyone who wants to save Tucson from itself.
A Blueprint for Failure
“Plan Tucson” is essentially a bundle of every bad idea the city has produced over the past decade including the Housing Affordability Strategy for Tucson (HAST), People, Communities, and Homes Investment Plan (P-CHIP), Move Tucson the transportation masterplan, and the Tucson Resilient Together climate plan. Each of these plans has helped create the mess Tucson is in today. Codifying them into 14 goals and 190 policies through Prop 417 would simply lock in these failures in for another decade.
Crazy Climate Commitments
Take for example the city’s climate action plan published in 2023 which set the delusional goal of having 40% of Tucson residents to be walking, biking, taking public transit or “rolling” around the city by 2050. The plan includes a commitment to “net zero” by 2030 for government operations and by 2045 city-wide—including private residents and businesses.
To achieve this fantasy, the city plans to build out a massive transit agency that if they meet their targets of hiring 900 new people every year will eventually eclipse Raytheon as the largest employer in Tucson by more than double (despite collapsing ridership and a 100% taxpayer subsidy since fares were permanently eliminated in 2020.)
The plan requires residents to hold to a “Zero Waste” commitment to empty out the landfills, imposes new road diets, and even pays city employees to not use their cars. This list of insane ideas is also very very expensive, with a price tag of roughly $365 million…
