Pima

When voters approved a half-cent sales tax in 2006 to fund transportation projects in the region, it was estimated the 20-year plan would pour about $2 billion into roadway projects with the Regional Transportation Authority managing the funds. The RTA is tasked with collecting the tax revenues throughout Pima County and making sure the funds are spent on allowable expenses, mostly new construction.

Multiple projects that have had RTA involvement have won MPA Common Ground Awards.

Nearly all roadway projects involve collaboration among at least three entities, the RTA said. There also is private sector involvement in some projects.

“Typically, in large road construction work, the physical labor and visible construction is completed by a private construction company that has bid on the project and won the contract with the local jurisdiction that manages it,” the RTA says on its website. “This is why you’ll often see construction trucks with the logo of a private company alongside construction work, perhaps even more often than you see trucks with the logo of the city, town or county during the construction project.

The private company builds the road to meet the jurisdiction and state standards, using RTA funds.”

An example cited by the RTA is the Tangerine Road project from Interstate 10 to La Cañada Road. It was a 10-mile-long project that crossed the boundaries of the Town of Marana, Pima County and the Town of Oro Valley. The Town of Marana was the lead agency on the project and was supported by the other two agencies.

Two signature projects of the RTA were the 3.9-mile Sun Link streetcar which used RTA, federal and local funds, and the Chuck Huckelberry Loop. The Loop is 137 miles of the 300 miles of new bike and pedestrian paths that have been funded through the RTA. There are plans for 250 more miles.

Two of the more visible and recently completed projects that used RTA funds were the widening of Broadway, the so-called “Sunshine Mile,” and the downtown bypass – the Maclovio Barraza Parkway – that opened on Feb. 17 with a new roadway and bridge north of downtown.

The Pima County Joint Technical Education District, known as Pima JTED, has been a collaboration of business, community, government and education that took years from the time a 2007 ballot measure passed to create it, to 2020 when the Pima JTED Innovative Learning Campus was opened. It was a 2019 winner of the MPA Common Ground Award.

On its website, Pima JTED describes itself as a “public career and technical education district which works with business and industry and 14 member public school districts to provide premier CTE programs to approximately 22,000 sophomore-, junior- and seniorlevel high school students each year. Our award-winning programs are proven to increase student success, significantly contribute to our local economy, and afford students the chance to jumpstart their careers and do what they love in high school.”

“We change lives,” Pima JTED Superintendent and CEO Kathy Prather said in a 2021 BizTucson special report on JTED. “We open up a new world of possibility and at the same time, we are able to serve the economic development needs of our community. Our young people leave us with leadership skills in addition to the technical skills to be leaders of the future.”

The mission of JTED is two-fold, to provide skills for the thousands of students who pass through the program, and to provide a workforce for the businesses who need those skills.

Free programs are available to high school students who can enroll online or contact counselors at designated high schools. Pima JTED also serves students who have not earned a diploma or GED and are under the age of 22.

There are more than 60 programs available in business arts and design; computers and media; health science; hospitality and human services; industrial technologies; public service; and science and engineering.

“Pima JTED is very blessed and benefits greatly from our many volunteers in the community, especially our governing board members,” Prather said. “Each of them in their own way engages and provides guidance, advocating and helping us to connect to others in the community as well as sharing their vast knowledge and expertise from their respective fields.”