Mary Jacobs and Michael Ortega, finalists for the Tucson city manager position, answer questions during a public meeting held Tuesday, March 10, 2015. Listen:
Updated 12:08 p.m. March 11, 2015
By Zac Baker, for AZPM
The two finalists to become the next Tucson city manager answered questions from the public last night at a public meeting.
Tucson City Manager Finalist Mary Jacobs answers questions during a public meeting on Tuesday, March 10, 2015. Michael Ortega and Mary Jacobs addressed the crowd inside the Tucson City Council chambers for about two hours. Both currently work in Cochise County. Ortega is the county administrator, and Jacobs is the assistant city manager of Sierra Vista.
Jacobs said that the biggest issue the city faces is keeping the economy strong by maintaining and improving infrastructure.
“If we want businesses to come here, if we want to be an attractive community so that when people drive around they’re like ‘Wow, I really want to be here. We have everything that we need,’ then we need to make sure that our infrastructure is up to speed,” she said.
Tucson City Manager Finalist Michael Ortega answers questions during a public meeting on Tuesday, March 10, 2015. Ortega’s approach was more money driven, and he emphasized the need to find the resources to execute improvements already proposed in Plan Tucson, a voter-approved sustainability plan.
“It’s a great document,” he said. “It addresses a variety of issues: social, economic, natural built. But ultimately, without the funding for that, without a plan for identifying sources of revenue to address the issues and really put that as a priority, is a challenge.”
Questions ranged from economic policies to climate change, and Tucsonans also asked the finalists what qualities were most important to them in a government office and to cite examples of how they demonstrated those.
Ortega and Jacobs are both University of Arizona graduates.
To learn more about the candidates for city manager, read their resumes below.
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