As city officials struggle to rectify the budget, Tucson’s mayor and council reaffirmed their commitment to nonprofit organizations and the city’s public drug use prevention initiatives during Wednesday’s study council session.
Anna Rosenberry, the city’s assistant city manager and chief financial officer, presented four options to cut the city’s budget amid a $27 million deficit this fiscal year.
“We talked about at that time how we would need to monitor our revenues, monitor our spending, and do some more work to bring forward to you some solutions within the current budget to not end in those deficit positions,” she said.
The options amount to $9.1 million in savings for the current fiscal year — only a fraction of the year’s deficit.
Rosenberry’s recommendations included foregoing the general fund portion of the People, Communities, and Homes Investment Plan, or P-CHIP, grant program in fiscal years 2027 and 2028, which would result in savings of $1.4 million in each of those years.
The program provides a starting point to “offer direction and scope, and create a framework for decision making” for the city’s Housing and Community Development department programs and funding allocations.
Mayor Regina Romero spoke against that suggestion, particularly due to the current federal administration’s stance on safety net programs.
“I understand that we find ourselves in a very, very difficult position in terms of our budget,” she said. “But I really believe that it’s important that we keep General Fund line items for P-CHIP and nonprofit organizations, especially during these times.”
Ward 6 council member Miranda Schubert echoed the mayor’s sentiments.
“I feel the same way. I’m really driven by thinking about what the greatest dangers to our residents are right now and how we can ensure we’re investing money to address those needs directly,” she said. “The P-CHIP program is research driven and it gets at all of the different things that are threatening our residents right now.”
Schubert mentioned traffic fatalities, homelessness and poverty as additional issues that constituents are concerned about that she brings to budget discussions.
“We know that the budget is a moral document and I hope that we can effectively put forward a budget that prioritizes our most critical needs and most effective strategies to address them.”
Another recommendation that received pushback from council members was to cut $1.5 million of one-time use funds for a new city ordinance to criminalize public drug use. City Manager Tim Thomure explained the shift.
“It’s not a reflection of a backing away from holding people accountable for public drug use. It is a reflection of the evolution of the conversation with the county and the county attorney’s office,” he said. Thomure added that these cases should be processed through the county and that the county is at a point where they can be properly adjudicated in their system.
Ward 4 council member Nikki Lee pushed back on the suggestion.
“Just as passionately as my colleagues are on P-CHIP funding, I’m just as passionate about not jumping to cut the public drug use (prevention) funding,” she said.
Lee said there are areas to explore to address public drug use and safety issues in the community. One would be expanding court availability.
“I would like for us to explore and possibly use some of this funding to scale court in such a way that there is a judge available during those core hours Monday through Friday,” she said. Lee said this would help people appear before a judge as soon as possible to get connected to resources through the court.
“I just wanted to put that on the radar before we swipe those funds,” she said. Lee said she’d like to work with the judge to evaluate what it would cost to expand court hours.”
City leaders also introduced forgoing extra contributions to the Public Safety Pension, saving $7.6 million in 2026, and not soliciting for two-year rounds of workforce development grants, saving $600,000 each year.
Romero thanked everyone for sharing their ideas on rectifying the deficit, while also facing a potential cut to transit funding if the upcoming RTA Next vote doesn’t pass.
RTA stands for the Regional Transportation Authority, a taxing and oversight body created by the state to direct funds collected by a voter-approved tax. RTA Next is a pair of ballot initiatives, Proposition 418 and 419, that would set up funding for transportation projects in the region for the next 20 years.
Schubert followed Romero’s comment with her own thoughts about RTA Next in the context of the city’s financial difficulties.
“It is hard sometimes in these conversations to not think about the $20 million per year that passing RTA Next would leave us continuing to subsidize transit for the region,” she said.
Romero and Schubert stand on opposite sides of the vote for the upcoming transit election with Schubert standing in opposition.
“A solution that I’ve been hearing more and more about from constituents has been coming up with their own proposal. And that could involve other regional partners who want to jump in with us,” Schubert said.
Romero thanked Schubert for her suggestion but said the immediate loss of funds if RTA Next doesn’t pass would be detrimental to the system, adding that putting another proposal to the ballot would cost about a million dollars.
“The only problem with that is that it really is not based in reality,” Romero said. “Where will we find the $800,000, a million dollars that we need to put it on the ballot when we have a $67 million budget deficit? So if you have any ideas, please write them down and share them with all of us.”
Romero added that a $30 million dollar hit from RTA Next’s failure “would involve layoffs.”
“I’m not going to vote for a budget that lays off people that keep the bus running. I will not,” Ward 2 council member Paul Cunnigham cut in.
“I mean those are the reality studies that we need to bring to the table,” Romero responded.
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