On April 22 I reported that Tucson was ranked # 1 in the 2013 National Mayor’s Challenge on Water Conservation (click here) for our city size. The deadline to take the pledge online was April 30. Tucson was competing with other cities in the 300,000 to 600,000 population size. Well, Tucson won, along with Denver (CO), West Palm Beach (FL), Bremerton (WA) and Laguna Beach (CA)!

National Press release from Wyland Foundation below. They say on their website that “Together we pledged to ...

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FOR IMMEDIATE NEWS RELEASE

Tucson Currently Ranked #1 in 2013 National Mayor’s Challenge
for Water Conservation

With less than two weeks remaining, residents of Tucson have kept the city in the top ten ranking in the 2013 National Mayor’s Challenge for Water Conservation. Tucson was ranked #1 among cities with a population between 300,000 – 600,000 as of Friday, April 19.

The challenge, April 1-30, is a friendly non-profit competition that challenges U.S. city leaders to see wh...

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Tucson City Councilman Steve “Lost Koz” Kozachik took office in 2009.  He did some good things then inexplicably declared war on the state legislature and some sort of personal crusade against state Senator Frank Antenori.  The same week he raised ten grand for a publicity stunt city gun purchase, Tucson taxpayers receive a $1M hosing.  Guess which event got more media coverage?

Coincidentally he’s just switched to be a Democrat.

Kozachik has spent the last two y...

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Please see here for a very complete account of the grading policy story at Pueblo High School. Board member Dr. Mark Stegeman (UA economics professor) appears to have come to similar conclusions as my prior post.

One of my father’s favorite quotes is from Woody Allen. I’ve heard it a couple ways but he always related it as “90% of life is just showing up.”

The older I’ve gotten the more I have come to find this an astoundingly important and fascinating insight. It (rather unexpectedly) says that doing the minimum or close to it is really a big deal in most of life.

In my firm I write insurance contracts for clients. What my client is looking for, and what they will pay me to do, is fill out fo...

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As we start debating the re-authorization of our state’s 1 cent sales tax I would like to pause for a moment and take a slightly closer look at what has been, and will undoubtably be again, one of the oft heard sentiments in these discussions.

You almost certainly have heard some version of it, but Paul Krugman (writing in his recent release A Manifesto For Economic Sense) provides a good example: “There must of course be a medium-term plan for reducing the government deficit. But if thi...

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In 1689 John Locke published Two Treatises of Government. Within those pages he detailed a theory of Natural Rights. Rights which are Man’s from birth, Rights which are not bestowed by government but which are to be secured and protected by governments established by Man. Those Rights he summed up as, “Life, Liberty and Estate”. Our forerunners in the 1st Continental Congress restated these in the Declaration of Colonial Rights as “life, liberty and property”.

These...

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Word is that the Tucson City Council will be discussing establishing a code of conduct for Mayor and Council.

Gila Courier would like to help out in this important effort.  We offer some suggestions.  Just a few general guidelines:

• If you choose to drink at social events while on city business, do so in moderation.
• Don’t offer to do to city employees what you have been doing to the taxpayers around here for past several years.
• Don’t spend $230,000,000 on downtown and have nothi...

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High school graduate Jesse Kelly defeated a Harvard educated Air Force pilot, a nice American named Dave Sitton and Frank “Spank me, I’m bad” Antenori. Now that the fat lady has sung and the primary is over it’s time for Act II of “The Barber of Civility”: A contest between the guy who looks like the Jurassic Park professor without the pith helmet and a carpet bagging gun-toting Bible thumping gosh and shucks Gomer Pyle who can channel Sean Hannity.

Jesse will do great among the unwa...

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Don’t worry, be happy … in Tucson?

Cityscape of Tucson downtown against mountain range, Arizona.

By Rob Lovitt, msnbc.com contributor

Is winter giving you a bad case of the blues? If so, perhaps you should go to your happy place, which might just be Tucson, Ariz.

In a new study, “The Old Pueblo” topped a list of the 10 happiest winter travel destinations in the U.S. It was joined, in descending order, by:
•St. Petersburg, Fla.
•Charleston, S.C.
•Napa-Sonoma, Calif.
•Seatt...

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PHOENIX – Saying the Pima County administrator needs to be restrained, a House panel voted Thursday to create a special committee to oversee county bond elections.
The party-line vote in the Republican-controlled Committee on Technology and Infrastructure came after a plea from Marana Town Attorney Frank Cassidy, who said the county has created a “culture of intimidation.”
He said part of that is because County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry proposes bond elections with more t...

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http://www.nbc-2.com/story/16662854/2012/02/02/nbc2-investigates-voter-fraud

County supervisors of elections tell me they have no way to verify citizenship. Under the 1992 Motor Voter Law, they’re not required to ask for proof.

“We have no policing authority. We don’t have any way of bouncing that information off any other database that would give us that information,”

Anyone know a place like this?