Speeches
This is where we’ll be posting the text of Steve’s speeches as soon as he gives them, with the most recent first.
April 29, 2005, 11:50am
Karl Rove Protest Press Conference
Outside Entrance to Tucson Country Club
Many in the media have credited political operative Karl Rove as the mastermind behind George W. Bush’s re-election last November through his “values agenda.”
But what are Karl Rove’s values?
Observation tells us that his values are fear, manipulation, greed, and division. Karl Rove’s values are not Tucson’s values.
I happen to be a Christian. So I am deeply offended when Rove claims that his values are Christian values.
I suggest that Karl Rove should actually read the New Testament.
He will discover that nowhere does Jesus call for a tax giveaway to the super-rich elites on the backs of the poor and the middle class.
In fact, he might find a passage where Jesus states that it is easier for a camel to pass through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter Heaven.
Nowhere does Jesus call for cutting off all help for children, the poor, or seniors.
In fact, Jesus tells us that we will be judged by how well we treat the least among us.
Nowhere does Jesus endorse dividing people from one another for political gain using fear and hatred.
In fact, Jesus is continually talking about the power of love. We must love our neighbors as ourselves. We must even strive to love our enemies. Jesus gave us a new commandment, one that he declared the greatest of all–that we love one another.
All major faiths share similar moral values. While there are differences, none of them have anything in common with Karl Rove’s values.
Here in Tucson, we do not share Rove’s values. It is disturbing that Fred Ronstadt and Kathleen Dunbar are paying $500 a plate inside the Tucson Country Club right now to learn the dark arts of fear, deception, and division at the feet of the master manipulator himself. Tucsonans deserve better than leaders who buy into that corrupt value system.
We Tucsonans reject the Rove values. We embrace real moral values–fairness, respect, vision, and hope. We can create a better future where all of us prosper, rather than just a few well-connected people at the top.
We must overcome our differences and act together for the betterment of our community in a spirit of service and hope. There is nothing we can’t do. That’s real moral values, and that’s why I’m running for City Council.
February 21, 2005, 12:30pm
Democrats of Greater Tucson
Rose Garden Restaurant, Campbell & Fort Lowell
My name is Steve Farley, and I am a Democratic candidate for the Tucson City Council Ward 6 office.
In 1997 I spent a lot of time listening to the people of Tucson. My wife Regina Kelly and I worked with ten teenagers as we interviewed Westside elders to create a collection of community stories.
Two of the people we talked with, Lydia Carranza Waer and Gilbert Jimenez, brought in these amazing photographs of themselves, caught mid-stride, walking in Downtown Tucson.
They told me stories of how important Downtown was to the people. How important it was to have a truly public place where the entire community came together. Those photos, those stories, were the spark for my creation of the Broadway Underpass murals.
In the course of creating those photographic tile murals at the eastern gateway to Downtown Tucson, I listened to hundreds of stories from people all over Tucson, people of all different backgrounds and economic circumstances and ethnicities. I heard their love for Tucson in everything they said.
That listening deepened and strengthened my own love for Tucson. In the course of my career as a public artist, I have traveled to many other cities. I can state that there is nowhere else in this country where so many people care so passionately about their town.
The tapestry of our cultures, the beauty of our environment, the strength of our families, the Sonoran sense of humor, the long, fascinating history; all these things make Tucson the kind of place that one can’t help but fall in love with.
In creating those tile murals, I listened to the people. I heard their love for Tucson. And I created artwork that reflects the best and highest hopes of who we are as a community. A place where all are respected, and all are connected, and we all stride into the future together.
That experience hooked me on listening to the people of Tucson.
For the past few years, I have heard people talk of their concern for the future of Tucson. Many of us feel that our city leaders are not thinking enough about our future. Many people feel resented or feared by a city government that doesn’t seem to want to listen to what they have to say.
I first became active in the public forum as a citizen on a City of Tucson advisory group in my neighborhood. I was excited at the chance to participate but soon figured out that the City just wanted us to rubber-stamp a pre-determined City decision. When we the citizens decided on a different recommendation, our work was ignored by City staff. That experience pushed me into the realm of political action.
That advisory board involved transportation. Just last week we all read about a similar situation that involved the selection of a new City Manager. After several fits and starts on the part of the Mayor and Council, a process was decided on involving a national search and a citizens committee. Last week, under pressure from certain well-connected people, the search was called off, the citizens committee was summarily dumped, and we have a new city manager.
Now I suspect Mike Hein may well be the best person for the job. I think he could have won the job outright if the process had been followed. But now look at the hill he’s going to have to climb to win back the trust of a suspicious public because certain members of our city council, led by Fred Ronstadt, hijacked the public process and substituted what appeared to be a back-room deal.
I’ve been listening to the people of Tucson. The people of Tucson deserve better!
As a councilmember, I will welcome citizens back to City Hall.
Another thing I’ve been hearing from the people of Tucson is that property crimes are soaring, and they want something done about it. It’s true–Tucson’s property crime rate is roughly twice the national average, and has recorded the nation’s highest property crime rate two years running.
I’ve been broken into, and most of my neighbors have. You probably have, too. When your home is burglarized, you feel violated. Your sense of safety is shattered. You want something done.
What has Fred Ronstadt done? He’s made it worse. During his tenure, the number of police officers per person in Tucson has slipped to the point where we are the worst of any city in the nation. And on top of that, he has consistently called for cutting the community services programs that can reduce the causes of crime.
I’ve been listening to the people of Tucson. The people of Tucson deserve better!
As a councilmember, I will be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. I will put more police officers on the street to reduce these property crimes, and I will fund community services programs which keep people from turning to crime in the first place. It’s a much better investment to spend a little bit of money keeping people out of trouble, than to spend a whole lot of money locking them up.
I’ve heard the people of Tucson say that our growth seems out of control. Our city budgets are always in crisis, our roads keep clogging and the Sonoran Desert keeps moving further and further away. If growth has so many benefits, why aren’t we seeing them?
We’re suffering from growth because we are not growing in ways that make sense for Tucson. For too long, we have simply sprawled into the desert, ignoring the havoc this has been wreaking on our budgets, our environment, and our traffic.
I’ve been listening to the people of Tucson. The people of Tucson deserve better!
It is important to point out that I do not believe in demonizing developers. There are simply good projects and bad projects. We need to encourage the good projects and discourage the bad ones.
In recent years, a new group of developers have been creating innovative new projects that do make sense for Tucson. From James Hamilton and Diane DiSimone at Stone Curves to Phil Lipman, Randi Dorman, Rob Paulos & Warren Michaels at the Ice House Lofts to Michael Keith and his partners at Rio Development to the Fina brothers’ mixed-use project up on Stone, a new breed of developers are making money by doing the right thing. These new places will help us grow sustainably.
As a councilmember, I will make sure that we make it as easy as possible for developers to build the right kind of projects by delaying development services fees to the end of a project instead of the beginning, expediting the permitting process to save financing costs, and waiving impact fees in the central core.
And these sustainable developments will be designed to use less water. Another thing I’ve heard from Tucsonans is that they’re worried that Fred is talking about the inevitability of funneling treated sewage water directly to our taps.
I’ve been listening to the people of Tucson. The people of Tucson deserve better!
As a councilmember, I will focus on conserving the water we have, making sure that new developments must meet strict water use limits and encouraging more compact projects so we can grow sustainably, then we won’t have to drink our own sewage.
I’ve heard a lot of people say that they can’t earn a decent living here. The wages are too low, and there are few good jobs available. Those high-tech high-wage jobs just don’t seem to be coming here.
I’ve been listening to the people of Tucson. The people of Tucson deserve better!
As a councilmember, I will push for an aggressive business recruitment and retention program working on many different areas. We need to better educate our workforce through support of public education and postsecondary job training programs. We need to improve our infrastructure so that we have the communications, utilities, public transportation, roads, freight, and passenger rail that high-wage companies need in a community. We need to push for the reduction of business personal property taxes to make doing business here more appealing. We need to increase the “hip factor” and make Tucson a cool place to attract the young, educated workforce sought after by higher-wage companies. In short, we need a war on low wages, fought on many fronts.
I’ve heard seniors talk about their worries of losing their independence if they lose their ability to drive. Within the next five years, more than one-quarter of our population will be 65 and over, and 40% of them will be disabled. They add to the richness and wisdom of our community and they must not be ignored.
I’ve been listening to the people of Tucson. The people of Tucson deserve better!
As a councilmember, I will build transportation alternatives for everyone, especially seniors. We must make our public transit system clean, safe, and efficient, so that people who cannot drive are not second-class citizens. We have to provide better VanTran service so that disabled citizens can maintained their independence. We need to promote and support programs that connect people with their elderly neighbors to help them with their errands, yard work, and medical appointments. We need to support programs that treat seniors as the huge assets they are, to tap their wisdom, and experience, and perspective.
People talk about being sick and tired of always hearing we are in a budget crisis. We seem to always be in the red, and budget cuts & tax increases are always in the offing.
Fred brags that he was the architect of last year’s “balanced’ budget. That was the one that he first tried to balance by cutting all community services funding, then finally created a garbage tax of $168 a year for each household to give us a service we already had. And the budget was only balanced by borrowing money from future general fund revenues, guaranteeing crises into the future. Is that fiscal responsibility?
Fred raised his money by taxing families, even those in poverty who cannot afford it. A few months later, fiscal crisis apparently forgotten, he delayed the commercial impact fees for large commercial developers until 2011, pleading hardship for companies like Walgreens.
I’ve been listening to the people of Tucson. The people of Tucson deserve better!
Marana, Sahuarita, and Oro Valley all have budgets that are in good shape because they aggressively recover the cost of growth in multiple ways. I will raise revenues by collecting the cost of growth, not taxing those in poverty. I will submit budgets that invest in our present and future and are truly in balance. I will not pass down deficits to our children and grandchildren.
If you want to find out more information and more detail on more issues, please visit our campaign website at FriendsOFarley.com–it will be like no other campaign website you have ever seen, and we invite you to log on and be a major part of it. Talk to me. I’m listening. Talk to each other. Get involved. We’re in this together.
In conclusion, I’ve heard Fred talk a lot about why we can’t do the things we want to do to secure our future. He says that we must be “realistic”, that we must resign ourselves to our fate. I’m sorry, but I totally disagree.
I believe we can make our future a better place.
I’ve heard many people talk about their fears for Tucson’s future. People feel that they are not being heard by city government, that our growth is bankrupting us and destroying everything we love about Tucson, and that crime and drought and traffic and low wages threaten our quality of life.
I share some of these fears. If we don’t actively work to turn things around now, I fear that our children will run screaming from Tucson as soon as they are old enough to leave.
But what ultimately drives me to run for council is a sense of hope.
I’ve been listening to the people of Tucson. The people of Tucson deserve better!
I believe that we can make change happen.
I believe that we can value people over politics.
I believe that, using creativity and common sense, we can solve our problems together.
I have a vision for our future. I hope you’ll join me in making it happen.
February 21, 2005, 10am
Official Campaign Announcement
in front of Broadway Underpass Murals
My name is Steve Farley, and I am a candidate for the Tucson City Council.
This campaign is about listening to the people. That’s why I wanted to start it out here in front of my Broadway Underpass murals.
Let me tell you a story about how the murals came to be.
In 1997 I spent a lot of time listening to the people of Tucson. My wife Regina Kelly and I worked with ten teenagers as we interviewed Westside elders to create a collection of community stories.
Two of the people we talked with, Lydia Carranza Waer and Gilbert Jimenez, brought in these amazing photographs of themselves, caught mid-stride, walking in Downtown Tucson. Those photos and those stories were the spark for these murals.
In the course of creating this mural, I listened to hundreds of stories from people all over Tucson, people of all different backgrounds and economic circumstances and ethnicities. I heard their love for Tucson in everything they said.
That listening deepened and strengthened my own love for Tucson. In the course of my career as a public artist, I have traveled to many other cities. I can state that there is nowhere else in this country I have found where so many people care so passionately about their town.
The tapestry of our cultures, the beauty of our environment, the strength of our families, the Sonoran sense of humor, the long, fascinating history; all these things make Tucson the kind of place that one can’t help but fall in love with.
In creating these murals, I listened to the people. I heard their love for Tucson. And I created artwork that reflects the best and highest hopes of who we are as a community. A place where all are respected, and all are connected, and we all stride into the future together.
That experience hooked me on listening to the people of Tucson.
I have listened to people talk about feeling cut off by their government. The people of Tucson deserve better!
I first became active in the public forum as a citizen on a City of Tucson advisory group in my neighborhood. I was excited at the chance to participate but soon figured out that the City just wanted us to rubber-stamp a pre-determined decision. When we the citizens decided on a different recommendation, our work was ignored by City staff. The experience pushed me into the realm of political action.
When I am elected, I will welcome citizens back to City Hall. I will fight to make sure that citizens’ opinions are respected and heard, not dismissed and ignored. Backroom deals are not healthy, not productive, and not democratic!
I have listened to people talk about the sense of violation that comes with being victimized by property crime. The people of Tucson deserve better!
I’ve been broken into, and most of my neighbors have. When your home is burglarized, you feel violated. Your sense of safety is shattered. You want something done.
When I am elected, I will fight crime and the causes of crime. It is unacceptable that we have the highest property crime rate in the country–twice the national average–and the lowest number of police officers per person.
It is also unacceptable that my opponent Fred Ronstadt has been consistently calling for the destruction of community services programs that keep people from turning to crime in the first place.
I have listened to people say that our growth seems out of control. Our city budgets are always in crisis, our roads keep clogging and the Sonoran Desert keeps moving further and further away. If growth has so many benefits, why aren’t we seeing them? The people of Tucson deserve better!
When I am elected, I will encourage development that makes sense for Tucson. I do not believe in demonizing developers. There are simply good projects and bad projects. We need to make sure that developers can make more money by building the good projects and less money by building the bad ones. If they can make more money by doing the right thing, then they’ll build the right thing; if they can’t, they won’t. It’s as simple as that.
I have listened to people say that they can’t earn a decent living here. The people of Tucson deserve better!
When I am elected, I will fight a war on low wages; a war fought on many fronts. We need to better educate our workforce through public education and job training programs. We need to push for the reduction of business personal property taxes to make our tax situation more competitive to recruit high-wage businesses. We need to improve our transportation and communication infrastructure so home-grown companies have what they need to grow, thrive, and hire more people.
I have listened to people ask why our budget is always in crisis. The people of Tucson deserve better!
When I am elected, I will invest in our present and future needs while balancing the budget. I will not push off huge deficits onto our children & grandchildren by borrowing against future general fund revenues, they way Fred did last year.
I will not raise revenues on the backs of working families the way Fred did when he created a $168 a year garbage tax for a service we used to get for free. I will raise revenues by recovering the cost of growth, just like they have been doing in Marana, Oro Valley, and Sahuarita.
The people of Tucson have many ideas for how we can govern ourselves in a better way. I pledge to continue to listen to what all the citizens have to say. This campaign is about empowerment. If we take our own government into our own hands, there’s nothing we can’t do.
The people want to support local independent businesses.
The people want to make Downtown revitalization work.
The people want to be insiders–not outsiders.
The people want to protect our water supply through increased conservation and sustainable growth–not by rushing to treated sewage from our taps.
The people want affordable childcare and quality afterschool programs so when they go to work, they know their children are learning and thriving in a safe place.
The people want our seniors to maintain their independence, share their wisdom, and feel our respect.
The people are us. You and me. If you want to get involved, visit our website, FriendsOFarley.com –it will be like no other campaign website you have ever seen. Log on. Talk to me. I’m listening. Talk to each other. We’re in this together.
You deserve better, Tucson. We deserve better. We can make change happen. We can value people over politics. We can use creativity and common sense to stride into the future, with confidence, with hope.
I ask for your support. Together, we can take back City Hall in November. Thank you!
