TUCSON, Ariz. (KGUN) — The City of Tucson has a big election less than a month away—the vote to decide Tucson’s Mayor. KGUN 9 has been interviewing all four candidates. In this profile we hear from Independent candidate Ed Ackerley.
Ed Ackerley says if he becomes mayor one of the first things he’ll do is call for a major clean up. He says people see so much trash around Tucson, it’s like inviting someone to a filthy house and expecting them to want to visit again.
“We're inviting people from all over the world to come to Tucson to enjoy our culture and our museums and our restaurants and our city of gastronomy and we're trying to do lots of great things and bringing people to Tucson, come to Tucson and they see like, what are we thinking? Streets are filthy, the medians are filthy, the weeds are three feet high.”
Full Interview with Mayoral Candidate Ed Ackerley
Tucson Mayors do not have the power to simply give orders and make things happen. They need support from council members to pass policies, which the City Manager will enforce. Ackerley talks about pulling groups together to solve Tucson’s problems and talks about not just City Council but charities and powerful players like University of Arizona and Pima Community College.
“If this continues down this path, we're going to be another Portland or another San Diego or another San Francisco and retail stores in the beautiful downtown that we have are going to be closing and and Park Place Mall and those types of places are going to be closing we're going to have even a harder time bringing companies into Tucson that want to start a business here.”
On homelessness, Ackerley says he’s not against helping someone who’s displaced by domestic violence or maybe economic trouble but he rejects the city’s emphasis on Housing First policies. They concentrate on getting someone a place to live then working on underlying problems like mental illness or drug addiction.
“Why is that suddenly become the city's responsibility for us to provide you with a house or provide you all the services? We'll give you an opportunity to, to fix up your own life, but you've got to be able to participate and then if you don't if you don't, then we need to be talking about some other means to get you off of this. And that might mean incarceration if you're a fentanyl, user or seller, and you're not willing to step forward and take responsibility. How long does this go on?”
Ackerley says he wants to boost police budgets and police pay to do more to reduce the shortage of officers.
Voters recently approved Prop 411. It devotes millions of dollars to repair Tucson streets, especially small neighborhood streets that may have not seen fresh pavement in many years. Ackerley thinks the main focus should still be on repairing major roads that carry most of the traffic.
TUCSON MAYOR CANDIDATE PROFILES:
- Janet Wittenbraker (R)
- Regina Romero (D)
- Arthur Kerschen (L) - airs 10/13
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Craig Smith is a reporter for KGUN 9. With more than 40 years of reporting in cities like Tampa, Houston and Austin, Craig has covered more than 40 Space Shuttle launches and covered historic hurricanes like Katrina, Ivan, Andrew and Hugo. Share your story ideas and important issues with Craig by emailing craig.smith@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook and Twitter.