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Memo to the Pima County Board of Supervisors: 

2 min read

ON AUGUST 6 VOTE NO ON THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN PIMA COUNTY AND THE CITY OF SOUTH TUCSON.

VOTE NO ON THE GENTRIFICATION OF SOUTH TUCSON.

On May 28, the South Tucson City Council promised a complete public process on enacting a GPLET zone in South Tucson. This would enable developers to pay no property taxes on new developments for 8 years and pay reduced property taxes for 17 years after that.

3 weeks later, on June 24, the South Tucson Council, prodded by Benny Young from Pima County’s Economic Development Department, voted unanimously with 1 abstention, to move forward the GPLET program.

GPLET has been used extensively by the City of Tucson in recent years to gentrify downtown. It is now the most expensive place in the City of Tucson to rent or buy a home. Poor and working people businesses are being pushed out. The gentrification process is oozing in a southerly direction. Peach Properties and the Volk Company have been buying up properties in South Tucson.

The City of South Tucson is extremely broke and dysfunctional. We residents barely have cops and fire. Who among us has a realistic hope that the City is not quickly headed for bankruptcy and dissolution?

But the people and the barrio, known as Barrio Libre, will remain after the City goes under. We will not stand by and watch wealthy developers, aided by Pima County, come in and loot and pillage and exploit our community, before it changes into something that looks like present day downtown Tucson, with many residents and businesses being displaced by people with more money and different cultural values.

The people of South Tucson deserve transparency and full public process regarding GPLET tax breaks and how they will affect our destiny as a city and as a barrio.

Please vote NO or at least delay this vote.

Thank You

Brian Flagg

(520) 624-0312

(520) 304-8443

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Fighting for Justice, Liberty, & Peace in Barrio Libre