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‘Thinkers of Tucson’ offer job creation ideas (video)

by on Nov. 22, 2011, under Arizona, City Council, Local First, Politics, Progressive Democrats of America, Raul Grijalva, sustainability, taxes, Tucson
CREDIT: Pamela Powers
CAPTION: Tucson: Facing Our Economic Realities

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Mahatma Gandhi

Job creation and economic development in Tucson (and many other cities) has historically revolved around a few well-worn strategies:

Luckily, the citizens stopped the fancy convention hotel plan last summer, but Tucson and Pima County have jumped on board and spent millions of dollars on these other strategies. And what have we got to show for it? A 23.4% poverty rate, high unemployment, a shrinking workforce, a rising home vacancy rate, home foreclosures in the thousands, and falling home values. Need I go on?

We need some new strategies. To this end Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) Tucson Chapter sponsored a panel discussion on job creation recently. Job Creation in Tucson: Building a Sustainable Future featured talks by Lisette DeMars of Local First Arizona, Melissa Black of the Green Chamber of Commerce, Joe Higgins of Arizona Small Business, and Jim Mize of Pima County employer outreach, plus local business owner Tim Carmichael of La Posada Solar Cogeneration Project.* Rep. Raul Grijalva was on hand to offer his perspective, and The Tucson Progressive gave an economic overview (above).

The focus of the evening was on growing and investing in local business– instead of throwing money and tax breaks to lure businesses here or offering Band-Aid solutions like cutting fees (which often lead to reduced governmental revenue and cuts in jobs and services).

Although the right-wing blog Tucson Choices dissed PDA’s local business focus and dismissed the group as a bunch of intellectuals– the Thinkers of Tucson (hey, thanks)– the evening was filled with creative ideas. Tucson Choices says that local politicians don’t have the time to come up with new ideas, so they listen to Tucson’s Thinkers. I hope they’re right.

To climb out of our current economic slump, Tucson needs to foster out-of-the-box ideas and invest in local innovation– rather than focus on being the low-wage call center capital of the country.

We have businesses that are born and raised in Tucson. They’re not going anywhere. Rather than chasing after the next IBM with tax breaks, the smart investment is to help local businesses grow by offering innovation grants. Instead of offering millions of dollars to lure a large company here, let’s take even 10% of that economic development money and fund local innovation. I’m not suggesting that we give Joe’s Machine Shop $5000 to move into a new building; I’m suggesting we give Joe $5000 – $50,000 to develop the next generation of electric motors. Now that’s business friendly.

In addition, Tucson economic development should play to our strengths. We have a research university and one of the country’s top hospitals– right here in the middle of town. The city should work with the UA and enable increased technology transfer. Research has shown that growing “eds and meds” does foster economic development, provides good-paying jobs, and is a better investment than convention hotels or sports teams.

The entire PDA event can be found on my You Tube channel.

* By the way, PDA invited TREO to join in the panel discussion, but they declined.

CREDIT: Lisette DeMars
CAPTION: Local First Arizona

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011 at 9:11 am and is filed under Arizona, City Council, Local First, Politics, Progressive Democrats of America, Raul Grijalva, sustainability, taxes, Tucson. Tags for this post: , , , , . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  • James

    How about you open the ports to the Sea of Cortez? OMG that would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. Or open up more mines? I dont know why you see these uneducated liberals with bumper stickers that say “NO OPEN PIT MINES” when their car came from an Open Pit Mine (Only in Arizona will you see that). Anyway, there are tons to do, except the leadership treats this town like it has 300 people. By the way this is not a tourist town, our town looks like crap, stop building hotels.

  • Friend of Pam’s

    What’s this with calling people intellectuals? Is there something wrong with studying issues in depth, then suggesting thoughtful solutions? Or are we just supposed to watch Fox Noise and emote all day long?

  • usmctrucker

    I agree with James, I used to be in hotels in Tucson and it should tell you something when not even Humberto Lopez sees opportunities worth buying in  downtown properties and the Westin LaPaloma is bankrupt.  Tourism is not much of a vehicle for Tucson.  And don’t blame SB-1070, the crime rate has more to do with it.  Believe it or not, outfits like the PGA, NCAA, MLB and the everyday travel agent really do pay attention.

    As for the other ideas, people are so eager to ignore what built Tucson in the first place: mining, railroads, and cattle.  The overall climate in Tucson is hostile to transport, power generation, ranching, and don’t even mention mining or guys really get upset.  Tucson has been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.  If you want to start somewhere, repeal the zoning restrictions that prevent the eyesore 75 year old houses from being torn down and replaced.  Get the blight owners to modernize or sell, that will turn your housing and construction industries around as you will reintroduce opportunity into home and land ownership in Tucson and get away from the Economy of Inheritance that shackles the whole city to the economy of the 19th century.  Then we can talk about (dare I say) going to the NCAA to get the Copper Bowl back.  But I’ll settle for repealing the zoning restrictions for a start.  Even Las Cruces looks better than Tucson. 

  • http://www.ihispano.com/tucson-jobs.html Tucson jobs

    In response to USMC trucker, I really like Tucson’s decay. Without a sense of history, what’s left? You take everything down that’s old, you’re going to wind up with another LA/Phoenix clone.

  • Ricardo

    At last weekend’s art festival, we walked around the historic area and saw many very appealing, old and probably 75 year old homes.  The place was vibrant with over 100 artists displaying their work.    I think downtown Tucson has a lot of appealing aspects to it, the courhouse being the centerpiece, although it certainly needs continuing effort to improve.   I have been through Las Cruces many times; the writer must have had a blindfold on to think it has any appeal whatsoever, and quite a sad tranformation from what it was like in the 1960′s.  And there certainly is a lot of appeal for Tucson if over 8,000 bike enthusiasts, including many coming from all over the country, are returning year after year for the event.

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The Tucson Progressive

Pamela Powers Hannley writes the Tucson Progressive blog on the TucsonCitizen.com and contributes articles to the Huffington Post and Salon.com. She has had more than 30 years of experience in written, visual, and electronic communication—including freelance writing, photography, graphic design, and consulting. In addition to blogging for the Citizen, she is the Managing Editor of an international medical research journal.

Hannley has authored medical research articles, print magazine and newspaper stories, and numerous cancer prevention and self-help publications.

She has been a blogger since 2006, joined the ranks of Tucson Citizen bloggers in October 2010, and started contributing to the Huffington Post in 2011 and to Salon.com in 2012.

Hannley holds a masters’ degree in public health from The University of Arizona and a bachelors’ degree in journalism from The Ohio State University. She is a native of Amherst, Ohio but has lived in Tucson since 1981.