The following is an AZPM original production.

From the radio studios of AZPM, welcome to the latest edition of The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

Coming up, the Tucson City Council has rejected Project Blue, but could the data centers end up in Southern Arizona, even without Tucson's approval?

Also, three wards held council primaries this week.

Who's coming out on top?

A panel of journalists joins me to discuss those stories and more next on The Press Room.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Welcome to The Press Room.

I'm Steve Goldstein, our distinguished panel of journalists today.

John Washington of AZ Luminaria, Dylan Smith of the Tucson Sentinel, Joe Ferguson of the Tucson Agenda, and Andrew Brown making his debut from AZPM News.

Welcome, thanks all for being here.

So John, I was on my calendar in bright red, kind of, August 19th, I thought Tucson City Council, let's look at what's gonna happen on August 19th with Project Blue, and they jumped ahead on August 6th with a unanimous rejection.

I love to ask the surprise question.

Did you see this being unanimous?

Did you expect it to end like this on August 6th?

Well, yeah, so they voted, the city council and mayor voted yesterday at what?

-On Wednesday?

Yeah, that's right, what Lane Santa Cruz called, not a study session, but a turning point.

And I thought that was notable.

And it was, yeah, unanimous rejection of Project Blue.

I think that this was gaining momentum and it was sort of leaning more heavily this way as the weeks went by, especially after Monday night's raucous meeting, seemed like a social referendum against Project Blue.

There's a handful of supporters in one corner of the room, all wearing the same union vest, but it maybe had a little bit of the optics of plants.

Otherwise, the unanimity was not only in city council, but among the greater Tucson metropolitan area, or so it seemed.

Yeah, Joe, so considering it got this far, I don't wanna say who's to blame, but I almost do wanna ask it to have gone this far.

Pima County supervisors, narrow vote, and maybe at least one of the voters was having some second thoughts about that.

What stood out to you about Wednesday, other than the seven zero?

I think that there's a real clear disconnect between economic development right now and elected officials.

I think that they're not brought in early enough in the process.

And so they are being shepherded these projects that they probably would have told them two years ago, "No, this is a bad idea."

And so they are just being brought right to the end of those NDAs and said, "This is the choice in front of you.

"You have a binary choice, yes or no.

"The supes barely passed it."

And when it came to the city, we saw almost immediately, one by one, people speaking out against it.

You've covered this thing for a long time.

It almost felt like, and I was just watching it online, but it almost felt like there was an avalanche of sorts.

Again, not to say, and John's saying there was momentum, which makes total sense to me, but it did almost feel like one council member was feeding off another council member and so on.

Well, I think in the last couple of weeks, especially as we have been able to learn more about the specifics of this proposal, instead of just the broad strokes, the elected officials have been, at least some of them, publicly asking more and more pointed questions and trying to learn more themselves, things that they were not told as this kind of negotiations proceeded under the veil of the NDA behind closed doors.

And a lot of those folks didn't know very much more, or so they tell us, than members of the public and reporters were able to learn.

And as things kind of, to go with the water pond seeped out into view, people in the public became more and more concerned about this, to use maybe the most polite term, and elected officials pay attention to voters, and especially a broad cohort of voters.

It wasn't just a small group of progressives who were kind of against this, it wasn't a group of nimbies who were just saying, oh, no, don't do this in my backyard.

It was a whole lot of folks.

There were even union people very publicly asking questions about the construction jobs, asking how long will these jobs last?

Right.

Andrew, jump in on this.

We know you're at Monday's meeting, which we'll get to in a moment, but what about Wednesday?

What's it out about for you?

I just feel like when I saw the mayor get shouted at at the meeting on Monday, that I felt like there was a palpable rage in that room, that I feel like I've been in Tucson covering politics and everything here for about 19 years.

And I think like maybe SB 1070 is the last time I felt this much public outrage about a topic.

And there were just a lot of different factors that I think really made people uncomfortable.

And I feel like almost every single person was talking about it almost everywhere that I went.

And I just felt like it was gonna be nearly impossible for them to move forward with it.

And I feel like we were talking, and you mentioned something about when the developers disclose that has less of a chance of going through.

Yeah, so there was a potential threat.

Maybe you could look at it as a sort of bluff that if we learned the name of the end user, the company that was gonna be running this data center, which we learned through public records requests that it was Amazon, then they would walk.

And it was notable, Kevin Dahl's response was, "Let them walk."

And they didn't, or they certainly haven't until they got voted out.

But now there's actually what seems to be potentially another bluff saying that, "Okay, vote us out, but we're gonna build anyway somewhere else."

And there's been a couple of ideas about where that somewhere else could be.

I know, Joe, you've reported on the potentiality of Marana.

We identified through our public records requests as well three other sites in the Tucson region.

There are two land sites that are owned by private developers and one by the state of Arizona.

These could potentially be in play, but the big hang up here is where will they get the water?

Where will they get the electricity?

And they very likely will need some municipality to provide that.

And Joe, a big part of before Wednesday was Tuesday, the reference to the council member Nikki Lee putting out this idea that there's a plan B for Project Blu I guess that shouldn't be a surprise either, but how much has that sort of tied the hands of elected officials in the sense that, okay, Project Blue's got some power that might just do an end around.

Well, I think that, you know, I think there's a lot of people that are skeptical now.

We've had Project Blue mislead us once before, you know, they said that their name comes out, they're walking.

They didn't walk.

They said that, you know, this is their only plan.

Now there's a plan B. I have some strong concerns that this is still a bluff.

The amount of water that they need and they need to pump in the AMA, the only non-exempt entity is Tucson Water.

If they can't get it through that, they're gonna have to go through a very long, very strenuous process that is likely to take years if they get it in the first place.

And that's not on their timeline.

Their timeline is to be opened in a year and a half.

And so I have some considerable doubts that we are gonna see a plan B come to fruition.

The Project Blue folks have told us, you know, for weeks that they had two other sites in the works, in addition to the one we know the location of that Pima County agreed to sell them.

You know, there was supposedly the second site inside the Tucson City limits where they would have access to Tucson Water, you know, infrastructure wise, everything would be there.

They could hook up to drinking water.

And a third site where they've been very, very mum about just somewhere in the Tucson metropolitan area, they tell us.

But they were very, very keen on getting this one site approved, like the whole package seems to depend on whether this first one works or not.

You know, I think it's worth noting here that the five of us are sitting in this room, all of whom have been very close observers of this process for the past month or months.

And we're speculating, we don't know.

And, you know, there are people who know, there are people in the city and in the county who know, and we've been able to eke some information out of them.

Now, I think back to the old aphorism, knowledge is virtue.

If you're gonna decide whether or not this is a provident or improvident decision to go forward with this mega project, you need to understand what it is.

And the slow leak of information is one of the primary reasons that we saw such fury in the public, that they were not only upset with the actual potential end product, but they were very upset with the process.

And that was something that actually got mentioned in city council study session yesterday, sorry, again, Wednesday, they were actually pointing the finger at the board of supervisors who took a potentially, you know, too quick vote on this to sell the land.

Well, the city council, or the city at least, was involved with this just as much as the county right from the start.

About the information, things have been so closely held that, you know, elected official and, you know, top folks in certain governments have not known that it was Amazon Web Services.

You know, plenty of people could probably make an informed guess.

I think most of us made that informed guess before we even saw it in writing, right?

But, you know, this was very carefully managed to try and keep information away from people.

Yeah, so to go back to the word fury, the phrase palpable rage, Andrew, you were involved in the Monday meeting, you were there shooting some tape, and I wanna give our viewers and listeners a chance to hear and see that.

(crowd shouting) Over the last how many years, maybe decades, we've been told that the Colorado is drying up.

I think we've been told that our water future is uncertain.

We've been told to turn the water off while we're brushing our teeth.

And so to see suddenly that we have all this water for sale is pretty infuriating, I think, to most citizens.

(crowd chanting) There's no doubt this is about water.

Reclaimed water is our future drinking water.

We're already recharging it, and we're gonna give 6% of it away to one company for 180 jobs.

(crowd shouting) We have other choices as a city to use our reclaimed water that are not this, which is another in a long history.

(crowd cheering) A bad development decisions for Tucson and Tucsonans.

Thank you.

Why did seemingly only a few people in the higher-ups of Tucson know about it for two years when the community's only known about it for like two months?

(crowd cheering) Electricity, we don't have the grids for it.

I live in the foothills.

My power went out for over two hours last week, no storm or anything, where infrastructure is older.

And so the cost of putting something like this online is just unbelievable.

(crowd cheering) Andrew, let me go back to what you were saying about the feeling that there was an influence that really affected people.

I wanna have all of you weigh in on that a little bit.

Are elected officials starting to listen more, or is this something that, as you said, if you're comparing this to SB 1070, obviously people were angry about this?

I just think that people live in Tucson because they really like Tucson, and they don't want it to be like every other place.

And I think that, you know, I was really thinking a lot about what, it was in the Tucson Agenda, the Steve Christy quote, that he said the economic malaise that we're globally known for in Pima County.

And I do think that there's competing interests here, but again, I just think that Tucson doesn't wanna do what every other place like Phoenix and Las Vegas are doing, building these data centers.

People really care about the water here.

People really care about the land.

I live in the Dunbar Spring neighborhood, and there's like integrative rainwater harvesting, and all of these like really grassroots community efforts to make Tucson its own unique place.

And I just really feel like that was on display at the meeting.

I think that's such a fascinating point, Dylan, let me go to you on that, because it, but there's a certain quality of life, a certain way of life that folks who live in Tucson, and there are some who based on Project Blue, and maybe they were on one side of the issue, and based on the Steve Christy quote that Joe got, can this be maintained, or I think globally known for, might be a little bit of an overstatement, but is there a concern, where's this economic development gonna come from?

Well, that's kind of two questions and one real quick.

Okay, I'm very-- One specifically about water.

For a couple of generations now, the city of Tucson through government efforts has taught residents of this community to be very careful and respectful and conservative in our use of water.

And we have been, this town uses less water than we did 30 something years ago, even though there are way more people living here.

We have changed how we live, people got rid of their pools, people have ripped out their lawns, gone with xeriscaping, be more careful about what kind of plants are in their yards.

So, yeah, people have been instructed by the government to be very passionate and involved in taking care of our water.

About jobs and economic development in general, yeah.

We live in a poor community, right?

Do you remember Pete the Beak?

Exactly.

Pete the Beak says, "Beat the peak."

- Yes.

The Spokes-Duck for Tucson Water, a very popular ad campaign from the 90s.

I love looking at those old ads.

The only thing I will say cynically, just to say skeptically, as the guy who parachutes in from Phoenix and has lived there for 40 years, Phoenix has said the same thing.

We're using less water than we did in the 1950s and there aren't that many people in Phoenix who are happy to get rid of their lawn or get rid of their trees.

So, that's why I wonder just about the people in Tucson are I think much more conscious on that level of saying I wanna maintain this because Phoenix has so many transients, so many people from across the country.

And yet, can Tucson somehow blend technology with jobs while also doing a pretty good job of saying, "We're responsible here."

Well, that has become part of our community identity.

On the economic front, we are still, unfortunately, a poor community and I think we all need to recognize that.

And we need more good, high-paying jobs.

This project wasn't gonna bring in jobs.

They were saying, "Oh, there will be 200 people working there."

We've all seen how that does not happen in every single economic project that the government brings to us.

Commitment was for 75 jobs, but these places don't even take 75 people to run.

They take maybe a dozen.

I just think that there was a lot of promises, but the contracts that bound them was much different.

It was a vast divide between them.

And I think that the unions came to those meetings and they were labeled as proxies, but I really think that they were making their best case to say, "Work with us.

Give us that PLA.

Let us know that we're here and we wanna work with you."

Because they want those jobs.

And as we talk about economic development, 290 acres, that'd build a lot of homes.

That'd employ a lot of carpenters.

That'd apply a lot of other union members if we had turned that property into a massive development.

You're right to point out that there's a big difference between a promise and a contract.

There's also a big difference between a contract and reality.

So at the Monday night meeting, one of the developers actually said that in his experience, the lifetime of a data center like this might be 15 years.

That's not very long actually.

And we don't know what the technology is gonna be like in a year or two.

So things could change dramatically and how much is it gonna keep bringing in?

We don't actually know what the future's gonna hold.

I kept thinking, what are they gonna do with it when it ages out?

Are they gonna turn it into more pickleball courts?

Like how many more of those can we have in Tucson?

Plenty more.

Plenty more, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're gonna launch it into space.

(laughing) Right, we're gonna bring in Nikki Lee.

So one other thing I wanna bring up, John, let me give you a first on this one.

There was a little bit of what I would characterize as throwing under the bus of certain city staffers.

Like why didn't you guys tell us about this earlier and that made us look like fools and we're the ones voting to some extent or not?

Is that gonna lead to staffing changes?

Is that gonna actually lead to a different way of economic development?

You know, I think that there's absolutely some public pressure, public facing pressure.

What goes on behind closed doors remains to be seen.

And what has gone on behind closed doors is still not completely revealed.

So were they in cahoots and now when they saw the public backlash, they say, okay, now we need to take a different sort of public stance on this?

I mean, we know that from these records that we got, we know that both city and including some city elected, we know that the county was talking about this for at least two years.

So now that they see that, okay, Tucson has, the public of Tucson has firmly rejected this.

I think a lot of them have sort of feel like the tails between their legs right now on the county side.

They're trying to sort of post hoc, put in some regulations, undo some tax exemptions.

On the city side, they're, you know, I think you're right saying sort of throwing under the bus some of the officials, non-elected officials, but yeah, I think there will be some policy changes at least.

Well, and I think you've got two or maybe even three new members of the city council coming in.

They're progressive, they're replacing people that are more moderate.

And so, you know, I think that they're gonna have their own voting block and their own ideals.

And so they might look at NDAs and economic development at very different lengths.

I think that that Tuesday night was a factor as well.

We saw the mayor get on stage at the Democratic primary watch party.

And, you know, she was responding to two people who are very progressive, who just got elected.

And she said, "We are hearing you, Tucson, that you want us to push a progressive agenda."

And that doesn't exactly accord with, you know, welcoming in Amazon.

Yeah, I have to admit, now we know what kind of city Tucson is, and it has worked, I think, mostly pretty well for residents, but we'll see how that continues to go forward.

In any way does this end up, as we watch the council going forward with new members, is there any chance this actually then does a loop around and we end up doing whiplash and we're actually gonna try to go a little bit more to the right?

Is there any possibility about that?

Of the city moving to the right?

Or even Pima County.

Especially not with the people.

I mean, we have one, basically we know who's gonna win one of these awards in November because no one else is gonna be on the ballot.

The other two are very, very likely to win in a Democratic majority city.

You know, are they gonna move to the right?

No, they may become a little bit more skeptical and maybe push for more open processes, less going on under the guise of NDAs and having more info come out earlier so that they know and so that the public can provide them with some feedback.

The most kind view of this is that we had some folks in local economic development and an elected office who were looking for a big win.

And in some ways this would have been, it would have brought in a lot of property tax money and that really would have helped, especially Pima County's budget.

But at what cost otherwise?

So very different issues, but John, you look eager so I'm gonna jump to you on this one.

So these are obviously extremely different, but Project Blue, Prop 414, what are we supposed to read about the way these two things have gone?

Does that say anything about the future of Tucson, short-term future, economic future, job future?

Well, I'll start by trying to answer your last question and maybe get there.

That was a big one there.

You know, we're no soothsayers, we're reporters.

So we report on what's happening now or what's recently happened.

And something that recently elected, rather recently won the primary, Miranda Schubert said to me on Tuesday night, said people caution me against being too progressive, but she won handily.

And so, you know, pendulums swing politically certainly, but right now I think reading the leaves, in our cup right now, I think that Tucson remains maybe increasingly progressive at the moment and maybe actually Project Blue has galvanized some of that progressivism.

Yeah, what it says to 414, I'll hand over to Andrew.

No, again, I feel like we have some work to do as a community because what kind of jobs can we get here?

What kind of industries can we grow?

Like, you know, I think that when we were talking about Project Blue, you know, I understand that we do have, like, you know, Steve Christy does have a point, you know, and I think that it can't just be this place for progressive retirees, like we need to invest in the future.

And I think that they're just, we have to figure out what that is gonna look like.

And again, we're just reporters, I don't have the answers, but I feel like that's something that we really need to do, have to have a really serious discussion about as a community.

-Joe.

I just wonder if we are looking at Prop 414 as not being progressive enough for voters.

I think that, you know, a lot of people rejected it for the sales tax and some of the things we heard, but I think there are a lot of voters that just stayed home or didn't vote for it because it wasn't progressive enough.

And so I think that I've been calling it Prop 415 because Mayor Romero was talking about another one next year.

I think you're gonna see a very different version if it comes to the voters.

With that proposition, you know, it may have even passed if it had been more conservative, but they tried to put together a, you know, mixed bag of stuff to give everybody something to vote for.

And just in the tenor of the times it gave everybody something to vote against, everybody could find something they didn't like in there.

Steve, you mentioned that, you know, a lot of this community is working well for a lot of people and yeah, for quite a few folks, but there are many people in this community where things are not working very well.

They're working lousy jobs for low pay, live in, you know, not great housing.

You know, there is a lot of work to be done in improving the lives of a significant portion of our residents of Tucson.

I think that's why I asked the now ironic question related to does this lead to a slightly more moderate group of elected officials, because they're on the standpoint of maybe there are people who really want Tucson to be more progressive, but they may say, maybe this isn't working as well as we'd like it to.

Maybe people are not getting the respect, the opportunity, and maybe if we were a little more moderate, I'm not saying that's the case, I just wonder.

I think sometimes the pressures of being in elected office and actually having to be responsible for the decisions and eventually being held responsible at the polls is a kind of moderating influence.

You can campaign on slogans, you can campaign on grand ideas to change the entire world and provide everybody with a supply of free unicorns on a daily basis, but that turns out to actually be very tough.

Yeah, being in charge is hard.

(laughing) And I've been thinking a lot about this too.

It's just, I wonder how many, like this data center, there's a movie called Eddington that John and I both saw, it's about building a data center in the desert.

I really do think that there's just this enormous consolidation of wealth and power in our country.

And I think that as we continue to see that happen, I just feel like you're gonna see more and more progressive ideas, because I think people in their own way pushing back against that.

And I do think that this is a really good indication of the spirit of Tucson.

And I also just wanna shout out the fact that you and Yana doing the reporting, John and Yana doing the reporting for Arizona Luminaria, disclosing that it was Amazon behind it, might have put and been another nail in the coffin for this.

They're like, young man, what do you have to say for yourself, like potentially ending a multi-billion dollar?

About 30 seconds and don't blush too much.

Yeah, well, I think that Tucson really stepped up and made their voice heard by city council and maybe retroactively by the board of supervisors, but also all of us sitting in this room did a lot of reporting and really scrutinized and had to pull out as much information as we could from sometimes officials or contracts or whatever was trying to be kept locked behind closed doors.

I think it shows the need for good service, public journalism right now.

Okay, great, yeah, great work by all of you.

Joe Ferguson, Tucson Agenda, Dylan Smith with the Tucson Sentinel, John Washington, AZ Luminaria, Andrew Brown, a great debut from AZPM News, thank you.

-I survived.

Yes, thank you all for being on The Press Room.

Thanks very much for joining us for this edition of The Press Room.

We are back next week with another episode.

I'm Steve Goldstein.

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