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EDITORIAL: New City Office Stirs Hopes for Overseeing Growth: Our View: Environmenal Unit Could Help Tucson Curb Unsustainable Urban Sprawl and Achieve Broader Regional Coordination

Posted on: Wednesday, 28 June 2006, 06:00 CDT

By The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson

Jun. 28--The city of Tucson created a new office this week. It would be easy to dismiss such an event as the normal shuffling of offices and personnel, but this could be different.

The Office of Conservation and Sustainable Development, a new division within the City Manager's Office, promises to coordinate city efforts to protect the environment as Tucson grows. It will also work with Pima County on efforts to protect the Sonoran Desert and our community's natural resources.

We believe the office is a step in the right direction for overseeing growth efforts and how they impact the environment. Growth in our community shows few signs of slowing, so it's important that regional leaders are on the same page when it comes to environmental issues.

"It's all about regionalism. The city and the county work a little bit differently, but we have to be on the same wavelength when it comes to the environment," said Tucson Mayor Bob Walkup.

City Manager Mike Hein said that the conservation office won't add to the city's bureaucracy and that it won't cost the taxpayers more money.

Leslie Liberti, the former environmental planning manager in Hein's office, will direct the new office and have an initial staff of three full-time workers and an annual budget of $300,000.

Members of the new office were taken from other city departments, Hein said.

"The new office should promote more efficiencies," Hein said. "In the long run, no single department will look at environmental policies just from the perspective of their needs."

City Councilwoman Nina Trasoff said she's "thrilled" by the office's creation and by Liberti's appointment as director because Liberti is sensitive to environmental issues.

The office "is a very strong statement that we care about natural resources and about growing in a sustainable manner," Trasoff said.

Key areas on which the environmental office will focus include, according to a city press release, preserving habitats and wildlife corridors; lessening the impact on regional and global resources; providing green space within the city; and considering the consequences of water and energy consumption, waste generation and water quality.

Environmentalist Michael Finkelstein, executive director of the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, gave the new office his qualified approval.

"We'd be excited to support this office, especially if it addresses the biggest concern we all have, which is unsustainable urban sprawl," Finkelstein said. "We need to control our precious resources and take a serious approach to reducing the use of ground water. The things we do locally will make our city better and help the rest of the world."

Walkup said the creation of the office should send the message to Tucson residents that city leaders are aware of environmental concerns. He said the office will be able to guide the city in the right direction as it strives to increase population density and curb sprawl. "We need to take the pressure off the edge of the city," Walkup said. "We need to be more about growing up than growing out."

Walkup called this a critical time for greater Tucson as the region will surpass the 1 million mark in population next year. The "magic million," as he called it, makes city leaders think about the future, much as people take a fresh look at their lives when they reach age 40 or 50.

City leaders have taken a positive step in recognizing that growth and environmental awareness aren't mutually exclusive. We hope, as they do, that the Office of Conservation and Sustainable Development will help shape growth policies that serve the environment as well as they do people.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: The Arizona Daily Star

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