Police funding is central to a ballot proposition to increase Tucson’s sales tax. But understanding the police budget is especially difficult, with funding coming from an array of sources and policing becoming increasingly more expensive.
Proposition 414 would raise an estimated $800 million over the next decade, with most of that money going toward police and fire departments. The sales tax rate for people living in Tucson would go from 8.7% to 9.2% total — including the city, county, and state sales taxes — making it one of the highest sales tax rates in the state. Groceries are exempt from local sales taxes.
Special election ballots are in Tucson residents’ mailboxes now and voting ends Tuesday, March 11.
Most of the money, about 66%, or $530 million, would go to the Tucson police and fire departments, while the other 34%, or $272 million, would go to affordable housing and “community resiliency.”
The proposition has sparked a fierce debate, with proponents, detractors and the noncommittal laying out their positions. Arizona Luminaria spoke with city officials and the police chief, and dug into budgets to help readers understand how Tucson’s police department is funded, what they do with their money, and what they might do with hundreds of millions more if Prop. 414 passes.
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Response and prevention
“Policing is really expensive,” Tucson Chief of Police, Chad Kasmar, told Arizona Luminaria. He added that “public safety is expensive too,” and said the department hasn’t had a sufficient operating budget for the department in more than a decade.
“I hope you can sense my passion,” Kasmar said, repeatedly emphasizing his desire to hire more officers and update the department’s vehicles and technology.
Tucson City Manager Tim Thomure told Arizona Luminaria that the intent of the proposition was to balance critical needs between emergency services on one side and affordable housing and community resilience on the other. He referred to the categories as response and prevention, respectively.
“By investing in both the response side, which we need because we’re not at the service levels we think the community needs, and in the prevention side, eventually you get to the point where you would start to tip the scales,” Thomure said. He said heavier investment on housing and other community needs “will decrease the needs on the response side, or at least stabilize them.”
Critics of the proposition, however, say not enough is being spent on affordable housing. Spending on housing and shelter services makes up 17.5% of the projected spending.
“The city continues to show through their allocation of funding and the tax revenue from this proposition that they are not committed to real investment in evidenced based models of care,” said Liz Casey, an organizer with the mutual aid group Community Care Tucson.
“The crumbs that housing and services are getting clearly are not making a significant systemic impact and until funding reflects real solutions we will continue to see the same problems over and over,” Casey said.
Other critics point out that the sales tax is regressive, meaning it will hurt lower income residents more.
How are Tucson police funded?
The majority of Tucson’s police funding comes from the city’s general fund, which itself is funded primarily through business and other types of taxes. But the police department also gets money from the state and federal government, as well as voter-approved special taxes.
Prop. 101 was a half-cent sales tax passed by voters in 2017 and which expired in 2022. Over five years, the tax garnered Tucson police about $36 million, which was mostly spent on vehicles.
This year, out of the total police budget of over $200 million, $15 million is grant-funded from the federal government. See more about what federal funds the Tucson police are currently receiving.
That funding, along with all federal funding, is in question. The Trump administration is seeking dramatic reductions in federal government spending.
“My crystal ball is that, over time, most of the federal funding that the city has entitlement to will still come because it’s outside of some of the targeted areas of the administration,” Thomure said, referring to the Trump administration.
He added, however, “The caveat to that is if the administration comes after Tucson just because we’re awesome and cool, then that might not matter too much.”
According to a Department of Justice memo, federal funds may be withheld from cities that impede federal law enforcement activities. In a Feb. 5 memo, Attorney General Pam Bondi says she will prosecute officials who “impede, obstruct, or otherwise fail to comply with lawful immigration-related directives.”
Tucson is not a sanctuary city, but it is an “immigrant welcoming city.”
TPD’s budget and budget history
The total 2025 police budget is $302 million. That’s an increase of about $57 million from two years earlier, in 2023.
Getting clear information and comparing police budgets in Tucson, even over just a couple year span, is complicated. That’s because not only do overlapping grants and propositions work on different cycles, and not only because there are occasional one-time dollars spent on various investments, but the city’s budgeting systems have changed in the past two years.
A significant reason for the massive budget increase between 2023 and 2025 is increased pension costs, some of which is state-mandated, according to Thomure.
Arizona Luminaria asked numerous times from both city and police officials for the best ways to compare the police budget over time, and over multiple calls and through various calculations, the clearest comparison was between 2023 and 2025.
City officials recognized the difficulty and, Thomure said, “expect that having a consistent financial system in place will improve the clarity and accessibility of the information in the future.”
Kasmar told Arizona Luminaria that 95% of the police budget goes toward personnel costs. So while the budget may “sound like a ton of money with that nearly $200 million, all but about $8 million dollars of that goes to personnel cost.”
He said personnel costs have gone way up, especially in an era of changing attitudes toward the police.
“We’re a decade away from Ferguson, we’re five years away from George Floyd. Would you encourage your loved one or child to be a police officer today?” Kasmar said.
Hiring a new police officer costs the city about $164,000 for their first year.
Currently there are 751 sworn police officers in the department, meaning armed law enforcement officers, according to statistics provided by the police department. That is a decrease from 788 at the same time last year.
Kasmar said his ideal would be to get up to about 950 sworn officers.
Kasmar said one of the most clear changes from getting more officers would be decreasing response times to emergency calls. Over the last five years, overall reported crime has been trending down in Tucson.
What would 414 fund for the police?
There are at least a dozen line items in Prop. 414 that would send money to the police. Some of the money would be spent on hiring more officers, buying new patrol cars, upgrading police substations, acquiring bodyworn cameras and new surveillance technology.
Prop. 414 would fund 40 new police officers at an estimated $5.6 million per year, plus nearly 200 more unarmed staff operating phones and engaging with the public, as well as Community Service Officers, who assist with investigations and reports for non-violent crimes, among other responsibilities.
Prop. 414 would also fund a new plane and a replacement helicopter, at the cost of about $16.7 million.
Prop. 414 would invest in surveillance technology, specifically paying for 10 full-time staffers to run the Community Safety Awareness and Response Center, what the city calls a “joint real-time community safety center.”
According to an article written by Kasmar for a technology magazine, the center would implement public security cameras, different kinds of drones, automated license plate readers and other technologies to monitor the city in real time. He offered as examples responding to street racing and threats at large public gatherings.
Addressing the concerns of privacy, he told Arizona Luminaria that he hasn’t asked for facial recognition technology or to use artificial intelligence to monitor or process video feeds. “Could we head in that direction somewhat? Sure, it’s possible,” Kasmar said.
“I’m looking to build credibility with the community through the use of the technology that we have, to more safely do our jobs,” he added. He said the department wouldn’t share video with federal law enforcement without a warrant.
What happens if 414 doesn’t pass?
City and police officials say that right away, probably nothing will happen.
“If it doesn’t pass, we react and figure out what we’re going to do,” Thomure said.
“It’ll be a blow, but we’ll take it in stride and we’ll be OK for a while,” he added.
Kasmar repeatedly returned to the need to hire more staff, which is expensive.
“What I’m asking is fair pay,” Kasmar said. “Fair pay for the professional staff, fair pay for the police officers, fair pay for crisis clinicians, for folks that are going to go out there and navigate the complexities of homeless camps and the unsheltered population. It takes all these things and all this investment to actually give people what they want, which is less crime and a safer city.”
As for next steps if 414 is rejected, Thomure said, “I can’t say what our plan would be because we’ve not formulated one.”
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