Insightful perspectives directly from the candidates
This is the third part of our series on the Sun City Candidate Forum held on June 12. Last week, we wrote about Mo Greene's council goals. Yesterday, we featured Elizabeth Robb's thoughts. Tomorrow we feature Mary Murphy. Today we feature Tim Bohen, in his own words.
- - -My first four years on council: From frustration to action
"Why did I get involved in this town when I moved here in 2015? It’s because I was frustrated by town government and in particular what I saw as the indifference and lack of engagement from council members.
As a trained engineer, I saw that a dogged approach to collecting information can give you the solutions to problems you do not think that you can get. You’ve got to define the problem properly and then you have to get all the information that is relevant to solving that problem. It shouldn’t be a solution that is worse than the problem or a solution that does not help anybody, but rather it moves you forward."
"A lot of residents brought a lot of their work and their life experience to Oro Valley and I saw a shocking disregard for resident interest by previous councils. I felt like the only ears that they wanted to talk to were developer ears. Developers got everything they wanted. Oro Valley was never supposed to be a huge place. It’s 15 miles from I-10. We have a rural road network here. What is a rural road network? It is a mile between the major streets -- east and west, and north and south."
My goal is to ensure that our town operates with absolute fiscal responsibility
"I wanted the residents of our town to have a council member, at least one, that is extremely knowledgeable about our Town finances. I attended two of your Sun City board meetings where you guys talked about your golf course and restaurant, and the level of oversight I saw from Sun City was far superior to the level of oversight we engage in, in my opinion, for our restaurant and our golf courses. You have your golf course manager here. You're asking detailed questions every month. We have nothing like that kind of relationship in a much more expensive contract.
Even though you have a restaurant and a golf course here, you're also paying for 45 holes of golf and a restaurant down the road via the half-cent sales tax. That’s about $4 million a year. Divide $4 million a year by 50,000 people, and you're talking $80 a person. You don't realize you're paying that because you pay it in this half-cent sales tax that's attached to everything and that's why I've been such an advocate for having really good oversight over what we spend on that facility."
And I will be sure that you know what is going on
"The final thing I want to do is kind of related to the first two as a council member. I want to be informative. I want to always explain why I think what I think at the council meetings. Why do we have to rely on newspapers and news stations, who's almost never here, to tell us about what's going on in Oro Valley? I think the best source of information for what's happening at a top level are your council members. Your council members should speak freely and in a straightforward way about the financial situation of the town and why we approach things the way we do."
My goal: To make a tangible difference for you in the next four years
"I'm an engineer and naturally curious. I was never involved in local government in any way, shape, or form until I moved here. I experienced real frustrations dealing with this government, and I threw my hat into the ring in 2020. Maybe you see it on the committees for Sun City or Oro Valley. You get involved in things and you see a concrete result for yourself and the people that you represent. I find that enormously satisfying. I really love this job and I ask for the opportunity to continue doing it for four more years."
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