Sunday, October 19, 2003
$230M bond is a step to save land
Conservation bond proposals
• Southeastern corridor: Spend $64 million for land in the Cienega Creek area, the Aqua Verde Creek corridor, and other key linkage areas for wildlife between the Cienega Creek Natural Preserve, Colossal Cave Mountain Park and the Santa Rita and Rincon Mountains.
• Tortolita Mountains: Spend $42 million to expand Tortolita Mountain Park, enhance public access into the mountains, assure a perpetual wildlife link between the Tortolitas and Catalinas, expand Catalina State Park and protect old growth, ironwood-saguaro forests.
• Upper Santa Cruz Basin: Spend $38 million for wildlife corridors in Sopori Wash, semi-desert grasslands on and near Canoa Ranch, links from the Santa Cruz River to west of Interstate 19 and conserving Pima County's ranching heritage.
• Altar Valley: Spend $33 million to buy semi-desert grassland, wildlife corridors, cultural resources and Altar Valley wash floodplain, and buy development rights and conservation easements for ranchland.
• Avra Valley: Spend $30 million on saguaro-palo verde desert and other lands in the Tucson Mountain foothills including the Sweetwater Preserve, the Brawley Wash and Santa Cruz River corridors, linkages between Tucson Mountain and Saguaro National parks and scenic gateways into Tucson Mountain Park.
• San Pedro River area: Spend $13 million to buy and protect land in far northeast Pima County along the San Pedro River, Arizona's last free-flowing river and Southern Arizona's highest quality riparian area that is critical to migratory bats, birds and pollinating insects.
• Tucson Basin area: Spend $10 million to protect remnant, riverfront land along Sabino, Tanque Verde and Aqua Caliente creeks and the Pantano Wash that house a disproportionate share of the county's wildlife.
Source: County Conservation Bond Advisory Committee
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By Tony Davis
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
A $230 million open space bond issue could buy and preserve nearly one-fifth of the amount of land that's expected to be developed in Pima County over 50 years, a county bond advisory committee says.
The Conservation Bond Advisory Committee said this proposal, outlined last week, would be a first step for the county to meet its obligation under the federal Endangered Species Act to protect enough environmentally sensitive land so other land can be developed over 20 to 50 years.
The $230 million could buy up to 46,000 acres of open space, based on land price estimates supplied by the advisory committee. The average price, pegged by the county's Real Property Division, would be about $5,000 an acre for purchases across eastern Pima County. Prices would differ in various areas, including the Altar Valley on the southwest, the Tortolita Mountains on the north and the Las Cienegas area on the far southeast.
About 75 percent of the $230 million would buy or otherwise protect land that scientists working on the plan and the plan's Steering Committee have deemed most biologically important: major rivers, streams and washes, desert grasslands and ironwood-saguaro forests.
The rest would go for parcels less biologically significant but still important for views, desert vegetation, recreational values and closeness to Tucson. They include expansions of Catalina State Park and Tortolita and Tucson and Colossal Cave mountain parks.
The conservation advisory committee is made up of nine volunteers who were appointed by county supervisors to make recommendations for open space bonds that will appear as part of a larger county bond election set for May. The committee met 17 times over three months before making its recommendation Oct. 14 to the larger County Bond Advisory Committee.
On Friday, details of the plan were discussed with the larger group, which will make a final recommendation to the supervisors on Dec. 2 on what projects and how much money should be proposed for the overall bond election.
"No municipality in the country has done anything as ambitious as this in land conservation," bond conservation committee member Tom Sheridan told the overall Bond Advisory Committee Friday. "This is our last, best chance to promote responsible growth and to preserve our quality of life."
Eight of nine advisory committee members supported the proposal. The exception: Altar Valley rancher Pat King. She said that "Pima County has no business owning this much land," in part because no one yet knows what will be the county's total requirement to gain federal approval of its plans for growth and conservation. The full county habitat conservation plan proposal is supposed to appear in summer 2004, and federal approval is expected in fall 2005.
The exact amount and locations of land to be bought won't be known until after the May bond election. The committee recommended that the bond not legally require buying exact parcels or spending specific dollar amounts for various areas of the county. Members wanted to give the county flexibility on what to buy.
But committee members recommended land-saving priorities for various areas that they said are backed by the judgment of scientists who have worked on the still-unfinished Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. A smaller bond amount would put an unnecessarily large burden on future generations to buy land for a county habitat conservation plan as prices increase over the next few decades, the committee said in its report.
The committee proposes another $19 million to protect historic buildings, archaeological sites and other cultural and historic resources.
This open space will be accessible to many Tucson residents, committee members said. The committee's analysis found that 10 percent of eastern Pima County residents live within one mile of the proposal's biologically important land, 19 percent live one to three miles away and 53 percent live three to 10 miles away, said Rob Marshall, a committee member and the Arizona Nature Conservancy's director of science.
Open space makes up the largest single proposal for next May's county bond election. So far, about $721 million in requests have poured into the county for projects including a regional public safety communication system, a new Justice Court complex, three new and retrofitted Kino Community Hospital buildings, rehabilitating the county's downtown government office complex and for new and expanded parks, swimming pools and community centers.
Storm drainage channels, river restoration projects and a new landfill have also been proposed. On Oct. 31, the overall Bond Advisory Committee will hear additional requests, from Tucson, South Tucson, Marana, Oro Valley and Sahuarita.
The conservation committee's proposal prompted County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry to say he plans to recommend a bigger open space bond plan than the $100 million he had previously favored. Because the committee did its homework well, "I'm at this point more confident that a much higher number can be justified and hopefully accepted by the public," Huckelberry said.
He also said he might support an overall bond proposal larger than the $400 million he had previously supported. He would finance a heftier proposal by stretching the period of bond sales from an original plan of five years to seven to nine years. Then, the county could sell more bonds without raising property tax rates, he said.
Four members of the overall Bond Advisory Committee, including chairman Lawrence Hecker, were enthusiastic but non-committal about the open space proposal. Another member, Dan Sullivan, said that accepting the $250 million bond forecloses many other worthy proposals: "I find that extremely difficult," he said.
Rancher King said she was concerned about the loss of property tax revenue to the county if it buys this much open land and takes it off the tax rolls.
Huckelberry, however, said that because much of the open space is now taxed at a low rate for agricultural use, the immediate loss to the county won't be that great.
* Contact reporter Tony Davis at 807-7790 or verdin@azstarnet.com.
