Four Oro Valley's Council Members (Mayor Hiremath and Council Members Snider, Hornat and Waters) are great advocates of regional efforts. They believe that Oro Valley can not attract new business or new residents unless they work with their regional partners. This "regional view" is illustrated in their unbridled support of TREO, MTCVB and the RTA. Do you agree with them? Take our survey on the right upper column of the blog.
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This is from an email we received from one of our bloggers:
"By not allowing blue cards, the gang [Mayor Hiremath and Council Members Snider, Hornat and Waters] doesn't have to listen to citizens. Another example was the elimination of summary minutes, Another example is by putting every item on the consent agenda. Another way is eliminating those "boring" council meets during the summer. The less pesky citizen involvement the better. Just let the gang govern behind closed doors."---
The Oro Valley Police Department is adding rifle mounts to some of their motorcycles. According to a KVOA Posting:
"It cost nearly $5,000 to outfit the motorcycles. It was the criminals who picked up the tab. The department used seized monies aiming to hit the bad guys where it hurts, in their wallet."---
TREO has touted San Diego as a great example for the "region" to follow. Council Member Waters waxed eloquently that San Diego is a model for our "region" at this past Wednesday's council meeting. A recent survey, ranks San Diego among the worst California regions for small businesses, the mainstay of our region. Note also that California itself is ranked as unfriendly to small business.
Lest we forget: In 2010, the San Diego city council voted to boycott Arizona because of SB1070.
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Read about Dave Perry and the Oro Valley Chamber of Commerce.
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5 comments:
Regarding the linked 2012 Thumbtack.com survey: I compared the results for San Diego & Tucson. I'm thinking - at least in terms of Small Business- that SD's version of TREO should have come to TUS.
While both cities ranked an F in Overall Friendliness, TUS actually received higher grades in 7 of the other 11 categories. SD was better in: Ease of Starting Business(SD-D; TUS-F), Licensing (SD-D; TUS-F), Training programs (SD-B; TUS-C), Networking Programs (SD-A; TUS-B)
Also of interest: we have 1/3 of their population & 59% of their median income.
2010 Population TUS 980,263
SD 3,095,313
Median Household Income TUS $37,025
SD $62,480
SD also has thousands of people from Los Angeles coming to the city for the weekend. It's a mere 2hr drive. Umm, do we have that kind of influx coming from PHX to TUS for the weekend??
Nice piece on Perry. I hope the Chamber does get the official Tourism Info Center designation!
Question on his quote below: is this an additional $25K or is this the funding already granted by TC?
“Now we’re looking at how we can improve what we do for the community,” Perry said. “We are discussing with the town a $25,000 financial participation agreement where we would provide the government access to our events, which includes four educational forums a year to discuss business issues of the day, as well as our ability to promote Oro Valley more intensively.”
Faveaunts
Only one $25,000 in budget.
They don't get two bites of the apple.
John Musolf
Water's defended the $1,750 spent by OV taxpayers for him (and Hornat's TREO's "funded" @$2,000) during the Council meeting on 6/20 for them to attend less than 25% of the junket to SanDiego that TREO publicly insisted NO TAXPAYER FUNDS WERE USED....makes you wonder how much of what we've been told is true.
Other points I think it's important to remember:
1. Waters and Hornat arrived Thursday, just in the nick of time to "Plant our flag" for a luncheon in an expensive and exclusive location and then set sail on a 5 hr., open bar, Hornblower evening cruise.
NOTE: Attending the BIOTECH conferences on Wednesday didn't seem to register on their priority meters. BIOTECH is specifically targeted as an industry OV seeks to attract.
The evening of the BIOTECH meetings would have been free for them to "attend" the 6 PM Wednesday council meeting by phone. That too, is altogether for another discussion....maybe titled SMOKESCREENS?
Other things we have "in common" with San Diego:
2. SanDiego is the busiest land border crossing in the world. Compare that to OV.
3. SanDiego is the 33rd richest city on the world.
I wonder where Oro Valley ranks?
4. The 3M population and demographics compared to OV's population certainly has commonalities we can learn from?????
5. San Diego BOYCOTTED our state. Yet, we sent TWO Council Members and tourism dollars to this "conference"....
In addition, San Diego has:
6. A busy international seaport.
7. World class Zoo and other family attractions such as Sea World and the San Diego Padres.
All it took was the taxpayers $41,011 TREO membership to have our Council Members participate in this event and with the promise of more to come.
More questions are in order.
Exactly Conny. The powers that be will defend this rip off to the death.
The only way to reduce the cost to the taxpayer is to change the make up of the town council.
Here is another example of over spending. The OV police department has a Ford F350 patrol truck (looks nice and new also) Can't they make do with a F250? or a F150? I invite you all to look at the cost of each upgrade from 150 to 250 to 350.
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