Aboud, Dunbar in sharp contest

Aboud Dunbar Hoffman

Political test of wills, accusations drowns out Libertarian candidate

Jonathan Hoffman might have thought it was safe to dip his toes into the local political waters.

Alas, the little-known Libertarian has been all but drowned by a churning political fight between Democrat Paula Aboud and Republican Kathleen Dunbar in their three-way race for the Tucson City Council's Ward 3 seat.

Aboud says Dunbar is too cozy with big business. Dunbar says Aboud doesn't have the experience for the job. Aboud says Dunbar worked against the city's interests during her time in the Legislature. Dunbar says Aboud isn't living up to her pro-neighborhood rhetoric.

Amid this tempest, Hoffman has tried to make the case for his party's views on limiting the scope and size of city government. "If Kathleen is the messenger of the special interests and Paula is the messenger of the nanny-state, then I am the messenger of the people," said Hoffman, a 47-year-old Summit Hut salesman.

But Hoffman's Libertarian registration consigns him to the margins of a race that pits Dunbar and her big business backers against Aboud and the neighborhood groups that have traditionally held sway in their North Side ward.

Aboud, 51, a property manager, hopes to follow in the footsteps of Ward 3 Councilman Jerry Anderson, a neighborhood-friendly Democrat stepping down after a single term.

Aboud has pledged to side with residents in rezoning disputes and to form new committees that would improve citizen input to city government.

Dunbar, 51, is trying to draft in the political wake of popular Republican Mayor Bob Walkup, who overcame the Democrats' three-to-two edge in citywide voter registration when he won office two years ago. Dunbar, a former state lawmaker who now works for her husband's mortgage company, hopes to convince those same voters that their mayor needs another reliable ally on the council.

The two candidates differ on many issues facing the city. Dunbar said she'd likely support a proposed half-cent sales tax to fund transportation improvements and would spend the proceeds rebuilding neighborhood streets and overhauling arterials to speed crosstown travel.

Aboud said she'd prefer that proceeds of any tax be focused on mass-transit improvements. But she said she'd be reluctant to support any tax increase unless the economy improves.

Aboud said the city should impose impact fees on new homes built in the city to raise money for roads and other infrastructure. Dunbar opposes that proposal, saying such fees would raise the cost of housing.

Dunbar also opposes the council's votes to ban smoking in restaurants, require background checks on private sales at gun shows and force city departments to pay contractors a "living wage" of at least $8 an hour plus benefits. Aboud supports all three initiatives.

Aboud wants the city to quickly embrace the county's Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. Dunbar said she likes the concept behind that ambitious land preservation effort but wants more details about its costs before she'd sign on.

The differences between the two candidates' campaign funds are similarly stark. Dunbar has raised more than $40,000, and public matching funds will allow her to approach the city's $80,000 general election spending cap. Aboud had raised about $14,500 through Sept. 21 - the date covered by her most recent report - and she could claim nearly that amount in matching funds.

Aboud has said that the business leaders who turn up on Dunbar's donor list will come calling for favors once Dunbar reaches the council. "She'll promote the views of special interests, of folks who live outside the city," Aboud said. "I will promote the views of the citizens."

Dunbar said she'll keep an open door for all her constituents, just as she did when she represented District 13 in the state House from 1999 to 2000. "I gave everyone my home phone number - I printed it on my literature," she said.

Dunbar was recognized as freshman lawmaker of the year by a national Republican group after securing passage of four bills she sponsored in her first year. Those measures addressed animal cruelty, provided funding for domestic violence shelters, set new rules for replacing lawmakers and overhauled the system for producing custom license plates.

But Aboud criticizes Dunbar's track record, particularly on bills that targeted the city council's authority. "Her positions were anti-city and anti-neighborhood," Aboud said. "She is not a friend of Tucson."

Dunbar backed a bill that blocks cities from passing their own gun restrictions, a measure the council has tried to skirt with a bid to require background checks on the private sale of firearms at Tucson Convention Center gun shows.

Aboud said she supports the council's efforts, which were overturned by a Superior Court judge's ruling that has since been appealed. But Dunbar said she believes that gun issues should be resolved at the state and federal levels.

Dunbar also supported a failed measure that would have blocked Tucson from passing its "living wage" ordinance, which she opposes because it doesn't apply to some of the city's own workers.

Dunbar said her legislative experience leaves her better prepared than Aboud for the council. "She's never been elected to anything, even in her own neighborhood association," she said. Aboud is a co-founder of Ward 3 Neighbors, a group that aspires to coordinate the activities of area neighborhood groups. Aboud said the group has arranged meetings between city officials and neighborhood activists, and she has said she'd work to form similar groups in other wards if she wins office.

Dunbar also chides Aboud for allowing her family's rental properties to fall into disrepair. "I question the hypocrisy of carrying the banner of a neighborhood activist when she won't even cooperate with people in the neighborhoods who live with these properties that are just full of junk," she said.

A Pima County zoning official issued three citations to Aboud's family business in June after finding piles of junk and an unauthorized trailer on one of its properties.

Aboud said she has never visited that property and wasn't aware of problems there because her brothers took over management of the rentals earlier this year to make time for her campaign. She said the rest of her family's approximately 45 properties in Pima County are in excellent condition except for one rental unit north of Downtown that has fallen into disrepair.

"I'm a very responsible and committed property manager," she said. "My number one concern is for the care of the people who live on our properties and for the neighbors."

* Contact Joe Salkowski at 573-4243 or joes@azstarnet.com.

Ward 3: Aboud, Hart sound similar note: Both pledge to help neighborhoods

David Sanders / Staff Vicki Hart, left, and Paula Aboud are Democratic candidates hoping to fill the seat of Councilman Jerry Anderson.

The similarities between Paula Aboud and Vicki Hart are more glaring than their differences.

Both Democratic candidates for the Ward 3 council office are pushing platforms that should sound familiar to voters in the North Side district. That's because each hopes to inherit the neighborhood-friendly mantle worn by current Councilman Jerry Anderson, who is stepping down after a single term representing the North Side ward.

Aboud has been more visible as a neighborhood activist. As founder of a coordinating group for Ward 3 neighborhood associations, she has organized candidate debates and has overseen meetings between city officials and area residents.

"I am out there on behalf of Ward 3 and have been for quite some time, long before anyone who is now in the race," Aboud said. "I'm offering creative suggestions on not only what the solutions for problems ought to be, but how to get to that resolution."

Hart has been active in her own neighborhood association and serves as a Neighborhood Watch leader. But she is better known as an advocate for crime victims, a cause that has led her to lobby state lawmakers and work in support of a successful statewide initiative.

"I feel like I'm just more global," Hart said. "I'm not just centered on my neighborhood. I'm centered on my city."

Hart, 52, worked as a social worker, a drug abuse counselor, a lecturer, an organizer and consultant for the Community Food Bank and a free-lance reporter before securing her current contract to produce publications for the Pima County Attorney's Office.

Her volunteer service has included working in support of a 1990 victims' rights initiative and successfully lobbying for changes in the state's insanity defense law. She also has served as president of the Amphitheater High School Parent Teacher Organization and represents Ward 3 on the city's Citizen's Police Advisory Review Board.

She said she became intimately familiar with city issues while working as a free-lance reporter at the Tucson Weekly from 1994 to 1999. "I've learned how to get to the bottom of things, learned how to get information," she said. "I have a lot of sources in this town, a lot of people I can go to when I need information."

Aboud, 51, taught English at Rincon High School and worked as a real estate agent before spending seven years coaching tennis and squash at Colby College in Maine. She returned to Tucson seven years ago and now manages her family's real estate properties.

She said her experience as a coach has prepared her to make neighborhood issues a priority for the council.

"I've been trained to push people to a higher level. That's what I do, and that's what I'd bring to the council," she said. "I don't see a driving force on the council. I see a reactive council. That's not my training. My training is to continually push to be better."

While Aboud and Hart agree on most city issues, they do differ on a few. Hart supports a proposed half-cent-per-dollar addition to the city's sales tax to fund transportation improvements, but Aboud is more skeptical. She said she might support such a plan, but only if the city staff produces a detailed accounting of where the proceeds would be spent.

"To just simply ask taxpayers once again for a blank check without knowing who's going to benefit does not support the needs of neighborhoods," Aboud said.

If the city's budget gets tight next year, Aboud said she'd support creating a citizens' oversight committee to review spending and identify possible cuts. She'd also consider a hiring freeze, and she suggested the city should push to annex Tucson International Airport and the Southeast Side University of Arizona Science and Technology Park to increase tax receipts.

Hart said she'd consider small, across-the-board cuts to city departments as well as deeper cuts to city social services, where she believes the council could find redundant spending. She also said she'd consider imposing a separate fee for trash collection and landfill costs.

Aboud said she opposes making city residents pay separately for their trash collection. But she said she'd consider imposing a new fee to raise money for addressing environmental problems at old city landfills.

Hart also said she'd vote against creating more citizens committees, as Aboud has recommended. "I'm for using the committees we already have in place," Hart said. "I don't want to reinvent the wheel."

Aboud has been endorsed by the Neighborhood Coalition of Greater Tucson, the Southern Arizona Central Labor Council, the Arizona Human Rights Fund and the Education and Labor Coalition of Pima County. She also has the support of former Ward 3 Councilman and Mayor George Miller, former Ward 6 Councilwoman Molly McKasson and former Ward 3 Councilman Michael Crawford.

Hart is backed by Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall and her top deputy, Mary Judge Ryan, as well as former state Sen. George Cunningham, Pima Community College Chancellor Robert Jensen and Jana Kooi, president of PCC's community campus.

Aboud had raised $12,679 through Wednesday, while Hart had raised $9,700 through that date. Both candidates have qualified for city matching funds, which will nearly double the amount of money they can spend on their campaigns.

Both Hart and Aboud trail the fund-raising pace set by Republican candidate Kathleen Dunbar, who will face the Democratic winner along with Libertarian Jonathan Hoffman and Green Party candidate Ted O'Neill in the Nov. 6 general election.

Dunbar, a former state representative, had raised $40,856 through Wednesday. Combining that money with city matching funds will allow Dunbar to approach the $80,082 spending cap imposed on publicly funded candidates through the general election.

Aboud believes her personality leaves her better equipped to take on the well-financed Republican.

"I'm a little more assertive than I've seen Vicki be," Aboud said. "I'm more willing to challenge the city manager than to just say he's doing a good job."

But Hart said her community experience would leave her better prepared than Aboud for that general election fight. "Certainly on the city level," she said, "I've got much more experience than she does."

* Contact Joe Salkowski at 573-4243 or at joes@azstarnet.com.

August 16, 2001

Ward 3 hopefuls argue guns, smoking, more

Candidates for the Ward 3 Tucson City Council seat met Wednesday night to offer their opinions on topics ranging from smoking to guns.

While most of the candidates who attended a forum at the Woods Memorial Library branch said they weren't fond of smoking, they were divided over the city's ban on lighting up in restaurants. Democrats Paula Aboud and Vicki Hart said they supported the ordinance, as did Green Party candidate Ted O'Neill.

"I have asthma," explained O'Neill. "When I go to a restaurant, I don't like to choke."

But Libertarian Jonathan Hoffman and Republican Kathleen Dunbar said business owners should be able to decide for themselves whether to allow smoking. "I think you have a choice where you go and I think you have a choice where you work," Dunbar said.

As for guns, Hart and Aboud said they supported the city's effort to require background checks for the private sale of firearms at Tucson Convention Center gun shows. The city is appealing a judge's ruling overturning that policy as a violation of state law.

"I do support local control, and that's what this is about," Aboud said.

O'Neill said that while he supports the concept of background checks, the city's money would have been better spent hosting firearms safety classes. Hoffman and Dunbar said they opposed the city's policy.

"It's a veiled assault on our Second Amendment rights as well as our First Amendment right to freely assemble," Hoffman said.

Similar splits developed over the city's living wage ordinance - which requires city contractors to pay employees at least $8 an hour plus benefits - and a proposal to charge impact fees on new homes built within city limits. Hart, O'Neill and Aboud voiced support for both concepts, while Hoffman and Dunbar criticized them.

Hoffman was the only candidate to clearly reject the county's Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, which aims to purchase or otherwise preserve open space around the metropolitan area. Dunbar said she supports the concept but worries about the cost, and that Pima County officials didn't accept enough outside input.

O'Neill, Hart and Aboud called for the city to sign onto the conservation plan. "It's time for this city to start being a partner and working on that, too," Hart said.

The primary election is Sept. 11.

* Contact Joe Salkowski at 573-4243 or at joes@azstarnet.com.

August 10, 2001

Hoffman seeks less-involved government

By Joe Salkowski
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Jonathan Hoffman, a Libertarian, is a candidate for the Ward 3 seat. If elected, he would eliminate the city's social services.

As Jonathan Hoffman described his decision to run for the Tucson City Council, he held his hands out in front of his body, palms out.

"You go like this," he said, taking small steps forward. "If you don't meet any resistance, you keep going."

He considered the political scene in Ward 3, talked over the idea with his fellow Libertarians and discussed the possibility with his wife without stumbling across any roadblocks. The only thing standing between Hoffman and a truly satisfying campaign is his job as a salesman for Summit Hut, which has kept him too busy to attend some events.

"I wish I was one of these housewives I'm running against," he said. "I can't afford to quit my job."

As it turns out, none of his opponents in the Ward 3 race are actually housewives. But even if they were, a Libertarian wouldn't stand much chance of beating them. Barely 2 percent of city voters are registered Libertarians, and the party's candidates have never come close to winning office here.

"I don't think Jon has any illusions. Realistically, he's out there to spread the gospel," said Ed Kahn, a Libertarian attorney who has mounted failed campaigns for mayor and the Legislature.

"It's easy to be a Libertarian and say you're in favor of minimum government," Kahn said. "But it's not so easy when you get into the crossfire of politics to say 'Hell no, I'm not going to fund that particular activity.'"

Hoffman, 47, doesn't seem to have any such trepidation. He said he would eliminate the city's social services and cut off public support for charities and the arts. He also would sell off Sun Tran to the highest bidder, privatize trash service and generally oppose any sort of government spending that isn't absolutely necessary.

"My theme is back to basics," he said. "The focus of municipal government should be providing what are traditionally viewed to be basic city services."

He opposes government funding of charity and the arts because they create "involuntary associations" between taxpayers and causes they don't necessarily support. He also opposes the city's ban on smoking in restaurants.

"People aren't forced to go into restaurants if they don't like the atmosphere," he said. "It's really an issue of private property rights. Businesses should be able to decide these things for themselves."

Hoffman would vote against endorsing Pima County's Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, which calls for buying up land or otherwise preserving open space to provide natural habitat for local wildlife. "It's a great plan for people who aspire to be feudal lords," he said.

He also opposes zoning, the government rules that direct the nature of development allowed on particular pieces of property. "It's a way to control property without purchasing it," he said. "I think it stinks."

As for transportation, he said the city should focus on improving existing roads rather than spending money on public transit. "Why you'd ever want to get people out of their cars is beyond me," he said. "They provide a point-to-point transportation system that operates around the clock."

He would oppose asking voters to approve a half-cent addition to the city's sales tax to fund transportation improvements. "What they should be saying is, where are we wasting money?" he said. "What low priority things can you drop? I think you'd come up with a bunch of money if you do that."

One thing Hoffman said should be jettisoned is social service spending, which includes public housing, job training, homeless assistance, utility subsidies and other programs designed to assist the poor. Without government support, he said, private donors and corporations would step in to pick up the tab for such causes.

"There's less perceived need now because people believe the city is taking care of it," he said. "Without that, people would start finding private charities more attractive."

* Contact Joe Salkowski at 573-4243 or at joes@azstarnet.com

August 9, 2001

O'Neill's focus: quality of life, involved voters

By Joe Salkowski
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Ted O'Neill, a member of the Green Party, entered the fray for the Ward 3 seat because he was tired of "politics as usual."

If Ted O'Neill actually won his race for the Ward 3 Tucson City Council seat, he might not have time to get sworn in.

O'Neill, a 30-year-old Green Party candidate, works three jobs and attends classes at the University of Arizona when school is in session. But he said he'd be happy to scale back that hectic schedule if he beats the odds and becomes the first minor-party candidate to win a council seat here.

The principal purpose of his campaign, however, is to promote his party as a refuge for those who feel disenfranchised by the electoral process.

"I was frustrated by business-as-usual politics," O'Neill said. "But being a humanitarian and an environmentalist, both of those qualities coalesce in the Green Party in a really good way."

O'Neill works as a job-development coordinator for COPE Behavioral Services, monitors probationers for the Tohono O'odham Nation and serves as a teaching assistant in the UA's department of family and community medicine. He's also pursuing a bachelor's degree in psychology, and he's thinking about trying to sell the graphite drawings and watercolor paintings he produces in his limited spare time.

Katie Bolger, who chairs the Pima County Green Party, said O'Neill is the perfect candidate to spread the party's gospel among working-class voters.

"I want to vote for people who know what it's like to work low-wage jobs," she said. "He had to ride the bus, put himself through school. He didn't come from privilege and wealth. He's someone I can relate to."

O'Neill said his top priority is opening the political process to voices and ideas that aren't usually heard. "Voter turnout is typically very low," he said. "I'd like to try to get people to get out and vote. At the very least, people need an opportunity to express their ideas in the community dialogue."

O'Neill wants to focus attention on "quality-of-life issues," including promoting alternatives to automobiles. He said he'd support a proposed half-cent addition to the city's sales tax to fund improvements to the city's bus system and other transportation upgrades.

He also said he'd ask the state to increase gasoline tax to provide money for improving roads. And he wants the city to impose impact fees on new homes to pay for the roads and other infrastructure needs created by those developments.

"I'd want to see the effect of impact fees on the growth industry," he said. "We have to find a better balance."

O'Neill said the city should be using tax incentives to encourage developers to overhaul the central city into a series of "urban villages" with mixed residential and retail uses and affordable housing. That way, he said, people could live closer to their workplaces and make less use of city streets.

The city could require such a development pattern on 27 square miles of vacant land it recently added to the southeast side. "That's an opportunity right there to push the urban-village concept and make goods and services available to people in the area where they live," he said.

To encourage higher wages, O'Neill said he'd push the council to create incentives for locally owned businesses that offer employees at least a "living wage" plus health benefits. He isn't sure what kind of incentives he would propose, but he said he'd work with local businesses to find out what might appeal to them.

"It would help our local economy compete with national corporations," he said.

O'Neill opposes charging city residents a separate fee for trash collection, but he said he'd consider it if the budget got tight. He said he'd be more likely to support a plan that charged people based on the volume of trash they produce.

He isn't sure where else he might find savings in the city's budget, so he said he'd consider raising property taxes to cover an anticipated shortfall in next year's budget. But he said he'd examine the city's priorities and eliminate wasteful spending, such as the litigation costs involved with trying to require background checks on private sales at Tucson Convention Center gun shows.

"Ultimately, it was a waste of time and money trying to usurp a state law they had no hope of changing," he said. "The city's money would have been better spent teaching responsible gun ownership."

* Contact Joe Salkowski at 573-4243 or at joes@azstarnet.com.

August 8, 2001

Dunbar: Friend of small business

By Joe Salkowski
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

James S. Wood/ Staff

Kathleen Dunbar used to dream about running a cosmetics company.

These days, the 50-year-old Republican would settle for giving the Ward 3 council seat a political makeover.

The North Side ward has been represented by Democrats since Robert Cauthorn ousted Republican Councilman Michael Borazon from the seat in 1973. But Dunbar, a former state lawmaker, said she could help fight the "non-progressive" attitudes she said dominated the council before the 1999 election of Republican Mayor Bob Walkup.

"There's been this perception here that if you don't build it, they won't come," she said. "Well, they're here, and we're not prepared."

Dunbar, a marketing director for her husband's mortgage company, worked as a saleswoman and real estate agent before serving three years as the community relations director for the Humane Society of Tucson. She represented District 13 in the state House for two years before losing a bid for the district's Senate seat last year.

"If she supports an issue, she's very persistent - extremely so," said Pima County Supervisor Ann Day, a former state senator. "She gets behind issues and she pushes them. It's just constant pressure, a constant reminder of how important this issue is until … she wears you down."

Dunbar was one of several Pima County lawmakers who convinced the Legislature to let Tucson keep a portion of locally generated sales tax to fund the downtown Rio Nuevo redevelopment plan. But she blasted the council for targeting receipts from existing stores rather than from the retail shops proposed in a particular development plan.

When the council drew Park Place and El Con Mall into Rio Nuevo's taxing district, she accused them of "stealing money from the state" and warned that their action would "sour relations with the Legislature."

If she joins those council members on the dais, Dunbar said she will push them to be friendlier to small businesses. For example, she'd support easing up on rules that restrict retailers from posting A-frame signs in front of their shops. "An A-frame sign is not an environmental threat," she said.

Dunbar said she'd try to simplify the permit process for businesses that are "getting nickeled and dimed to death" in the city's Development Services Office. She said she'd encourage neighborhood associations to build relationships with area businesses before circumstances pit them against each other.

"Small business needs an advocate on the council, someone who knows what they're going through," she said.

Dunbar said she'd oppose imposing impact fees on new homes as a way to pay for roads and other infrastructure: "It just raises the price of housing."

She would support asking city voters to add a half-cent to the city's sales tax to fund transportation improvements. She also said she'd lobby the Legislature to increase gasoline taxes to raise even more money.

Dunbar said she'd like to see the money spent to build grade-separated intersections and six limited-access parkways through Tucson - three each running north-south and east-west. She said she'd oppose additional funding for the city's bus service until it becomes more efficient.

She opposes the council's so-far futile effort to skirt state restrictions and require background checks on the private sale of firearms at Tucson Convention Center gun shows. "I believe in local control, but we need a statewide policy for guns," Dunbar said.

If the city's budget gets tight next year, she said she'd look to eliminate waste in the city's social service spending. "All you have to do is open up a social service program and the city will fund you," she said. She also said she'd consider scrapping gifts to the United Way and other charitable causes.

Dunbar said she would oppose raising taxes to cover revenue shortfalls. She also opposes the city manager's request for a separate fee to cover trash collection and landfill maintenance.

"There's just some things the government ought to take care of," she said.

* Contact Joe Salkowski at 573-4243 or at joes@azstarnet.com.

August 7, 2001

Victims' rights just one calling

By Joe Salkowski
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Jori Klein / Staff Vicki Hart, a candidate for the City Council in Ward 3, is a former social worker who advocates for various social causes.

To Vicki Hart, a seat on the Tucson City Council looks like a logical next step in a lifetime of community service.

Hart, a 52-year-old Democrat, has counseled both criminals and victims of crime. She has been a school volunteer, a fund-raiser for the hungry, a neighborhood organizer and an award-winning volunteer for the various social causes that have crossed her path.

"You know how people say, 'Somebody ought to do something about that'?" Hart said. "Well, I'm the somebody."

Hart was a social worker in Escondido, Calif., before moving to Tucson in 1973 and starting work as a drug abuse counselor. She later worked as a case manager for elderly and disabled clients of Jewish Family Services and as an organizer for the Community Food Bank's Waste Not Warehouse.

She's perhaps best known as victims' rights advocate, a calling that persuaded her to lobby for passage of a 1990 ballot initiative that gave crime victims new privileges in court proceedings.

"She helped draft the initiative and gather the signatures, and then did the most difficult work of getting the message out to the public about why this was so important," said Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall, a longtime friend of Hart's. "She's extremely effective, very persuasive and totally relentless."

Hart produces newsletters and other publications for LaWall's office on a $24,900 annual contract that expires at the end of this year.

She said public safety is a top priority of her campaign. She supports the council's efforts to skirt state restrictions and require background checks on the private sale of firearms at Tucson Convention Center gun shows.

She also wants to increase the number of Tucson Police Department officers assigned to schools as student resource officers and include the Tucson Fire Department in drafting school safety plans. "If parents can't feel students are safe at school, that's a real problem," she said.

Hart, who represents Ward 3 on the Citizen's Police Advisory Review Board, said the city should expand the outside review of complaints filed against TPD.

"I'm not real thrilled with the chain-of-command way of dealing with complaints," she said. "I think we need to bring more accountability."

She said she would support a half-cent addition to the city's sales tax to fund transportation improvements. She isn't set on any particular plan for spending that money, but she said neighborhoods and businesses should be included in the process of setting priorities.

"We have to have a reliable source of money so this isn't a stopgap situation anymore," she said.

Hart supports impact fees on new homes built in the city to pay for roads and other infrastructure needs those houses create. "The city is like a club," she said. "We paid our dues. The new members, when they come in, need to pay theirs."

She said she'd push the council to offer tax breaks to encourage new businesses to set up shop Downtown. "Sometimes it seems like the city is so unfriendly to small businesses that only big businesses can survive," she said.

If money is tight next year, Hart said, she'd be willing to consider charging city residents a separate fee to pay for trash collection and landfill needs. She said she'd also look to combine city and county departments and push for small, across-the-board cuts in spending rather than seek a tax increase.

Hart also said she'd be willing to cut back on social service spending - a painful decision for a former social worker.

August 6, 2001

Council candidate organizes activists

By Joe Salkowski
ARIZONA DAILY STAR

Chris Richards / Staff Paula Aboud is running for Tucson City Council, Ward 3.

If the WNBA had started up a few decades earlier, Paula Aboud might have spent more time playing in front of crowds.

Instead, she's been working to put them together.

Aboud, a former standout basketball player and sports coach, has given up driving the lane and drawing up plays for the less glamorous task of organizing Tucson neighborhood activists.

"My political work is all about teamwork," said Aboud, a 51-year-old Democrat. "Everything I do is about teaching and coaching, which is about empowering people. And that comes from playing on a team that's working together."

Aboud is a co-founder of Ward 3 Neighbors, a coordinating group for North Side neighborhood associations. She has organized forums to discuss neighborhood issues and helped associations to present a unified front to the City Council.

"She researches and studies the issues, and she's truly a listener," said Sandy Pederson, a member of the steering committee of the Hedrick Acres Neighborhood Association. "A lot of times neighborhoods are divided over issues, but she tries to build a sense of consensus."

Aboud, a Tucson native, worked as an English teacher at Rincon High School and as a real estate agent before spending seven years coaching tennis and squash at Colby College in Maine. She returned to Tucson seven years ago and now works as a property manager for her family's real estate holdings.

She said her top priority is making city government more accountable to city residents. "I want to open up the process to people," she said. "People want to know what government is doing that affects their lives."

She would like to create citizen advisory councils to help prioritize transportation projects, including those that might be funded by a potential half-cent-per-dollar addition to the city's sales tax. She also would like to use those citizen committees to help choose a new city transportation director.

Aboud said she supports submitting a sales tax proposal to voters if it coincided with the approval of development impact fees on new homes built on the city's fringes.

"Impact fees provide money upfront to create infrastructure and to motivate people to move into particular areas," she said. "Growth needs to pay for itself so that citizens aren't continually asked to bear the burden."

She said the city should make more of an effort to help small businesses, including transferring experienced staff members into positions where they could advise those who are just starting their own enterprises. "We need to shift our focus away from bringing in large businesses and concentrate more on supporting Tucson businesses," she said.

Aboud endorses the City Council's efforts to buck state restrictions and require background checks on the private sale of firearms at Tucson Convention Center gun shows. "I'm impressed with the leadership the city has shown on that issue," she said.

She was less impressed with the city's budget negotiations earlier this year. She said City Manager James Keene "created a lack of trust" by failing to advise council members about the availability of reserve funds until they were documented by the Arizona Daily Star.

If money gets tight next year, she said she'd at least consider imposing a monthly fee to fund trash collection and landfill needs. "I am interested in looking at a fee for waste management," she said. "It's incumbent upon this community to address this issue."

Ultimately, she said she'd trust her experience with neighborhood issues to guide her through whatever decisions might await her on the council. "I'm the most experienced candidate in this race," she said. "I'm the authentic candidate."

* Contact Joe Salkowski at 573-4243 or at joes@azstarnet.com.

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