Annexing The Foothills
by Art Jacobson on Jan. 31, 2010, under PoliticsIn his State of The City address Mayor Bob Walkup had a message for the Catalina Foothills: Annex or Incorporate. Our communities are losing out on state revenue sharing… money which goes to incorporated areas.
The message was directed at other unincorporated areas as well, Vail, Green Valley and Casas Adobes…but it was the call to the foothills that grabbed the attention of the local press.
Some historical perspective is needed here. If you are a relative newcomer you probably don’t know that in 1997 there was a major move to incorporate the Foothills as an independent city.
Other unincorporated communities moved to incorporate, as well. Groups in Casas Adobes, Tanque Verde, and Tortolita organized incorporation campaigns, but it was in the Foothills that a kind of battle royal ensued.
(Journalism sidebar: The Star’s current political beat writer, Rhonda Bodfield, covered the story then.)
From this distance it’s hard to determine exactly what the motives behind the incorporation movement were. At the very least it’s safe to say that the organizers wanted to put paid to any possibility of annexation by the city.
Rightly or wrongly folks viewed annexation as costing them money in higher taxes. They also feared that joining the city would lead to to denser housing zoning. The foothills were then predominantly Republican and saw no future in being swallowed up by Democratic Tucson.
(Since then the state of Arizona has changed our election laws so that each city council rep will be elected on a ward by ward basis and not city-wide.)
The pro-incorporation forces had no really clear idea of what the long term costs of incorporating would be. Their opponents argued that the pro forces thought governing a city would be something like running a very large homeowners’ association; almost, but not quite, like something that could be done by volunteers working in a storefront office.
When the vote was held the incorporation forces were soundly defeated in every single precinct. It became clear that becoming your own city might be more trouble and expense than it was worth.
(The other incorporation efforts failed as well.)
All that was then, and this is now. No one fears being annexed because there is no such thing as a ‘hostile annexation.’ Before the Foothills could become part of Tucson, fifty percent plus one of the properties involved would have to sign off on it; as would properties representing fifty percent plus one dollar of valuation.
Become part of the city? It might be a really good thing, but it ain’t goin’ to happen.
