My Vision for Marana

Julie Prince, Candidate, Marana Town Council

Part of the Marana for the People slate of candidates, which includes Sue Ritz and Jackie McGuire for Council and Greg Johnsen for Mayor.

My vision for the Town of Marana is to be the best diverse community to live in and visit in southeastern Arizona.

What I Will Do

As a journalist for decades, I know the importance of accountability, transparency, and healthy public discourse. I will work to revise the Council’s Ethics Code to make elected officials accountable to residents and others through a reciprocal-review relationship with another nearby jurisdiction. For example, that partner jurisdiction would review written concerns and other pertinent information about a Marana Council member, Council members, and/or the Mayor, then recommend action under our revised Ethics Code. This would include social media. The Marana Council and Mayor would also perform the same review and recommendation process for our partner town or city under their similar ethics-related measure.

I will work to make sure the state’s Open Meeting Law is not only followed, but used as the minimum basis for holding Marana’s public meetings. For example, I would work to abolish the current Marana Mayor and Council rule that limits public comment periods during meetings to 30 minutes total and three minutes per person. This has meant that no matter how many residents turn out to speak, raise concerns, or ask questions, public comments are terminated at thirty minutes, and only ten people are allowed to address their elected representatives at each meeting.

I would also work to allow time for public responses to remarks made by the Mayor and Council, who currently take advantage of the Open Meeting Law by responding to comments and criticisms made during the public comment period. However, unlike most city, town, and county public meetings I have attended across the country, the Marana Mayor and Council currently ban any further interaction once they have spoken and, at times, have threatened those who try to speak out with forcible removal from meetings.

I will work to make sure more public involvement and education are available for large, impactful projects such as the data centers and ICE detention facility. Again, the emphasis must be on listening to residents. This means providing opportunities for Marana constituents to ask questions, voice concerns, offer accolades, develop a better understanding of the Council’s decisions, and make suggestions about how our Town could run better through town halls, office hours, and meetings.

I will work to integrate housing and commercial growth responsibly with our beautiful surroundings, while involving the public more directly in growth decisions and in how to create those opportunities. This includes restaurants, family-oriented entertainment facilities, and working much more closely with the Marana Unified School District to improve the local public education system for everyone involved in it.

I would like to explore an expansion of the Town’s already excellent Animal Control Department, perhaps creating a local shelter if that makes sense. I would work on extending The Loop past Sanders Road, where it currently abruptly ends. It would be great to have it connect back to the Ina Road Loop interchange through a continuous route.

I would also like to bring back the Tour of the Tucson Mountains, which used to provide a family-oriented activity that brought the community together and helped show off the Marana area, impacting tourism and, to an extent, the economy. I would also like to explore more uniform, consistent, reliable, and affordable trash and recycling pickup, and make sure our government and park landscaping areas use low-water landscaping.

The Tucson-Pima County Bicycle Advisory Committee used to be something Marana was part of, and will be again when I am elected. It is important that Marana is represented on this regional governmental committee for current and future transportation planning purposes. The Marana Mayor and Council should still be interviewing potential Town representatives to sit on the TPCBAC and then appointing their selected candidate. That person is then to appear before the Pima County Board of Supervisors for the same process. A Town staff member is also expected to serve on the TPCBAC.

My Civic Service Background

In 2009, I was appointed by Mayor Ed Honea and the Marana Town Council to be the Marana representative on the Tucson-Pima County Bicycle Advisory Committee. I attended the monthly meetings and served as the eyes, ears, and voice of Marana in all bicycle-related matters. I also handled media coverage for the Committee, including news releases and outreach, during my two-year term.

The six-foot-wide bicycle lanes along Twin Peaks were a project I worked on. The Committee subsequently appointed me to represent alternative modes of transportation on the Silverbell Road Citizen’s Task Force, where I provided input on the future widening of Silverbell Road. I worked with representatives from the Arizona Department of Transportation, the Regional Transportation Authority, the City of Tucson, Pima County, and the Town of Marana. It was an honor to represent Marana on the TPCBAC and, subsequently, on the Citizen’s Task Force for the expansion of Silverbell Road.

I became involved with a neighborhood task force in late 2022 following a pedestrian death in Continental Ranch, about a mile from my home. Mayor Honea and the Council heard from many Sunflower neighbors and a few other residents, including me, about roadway hazards in the Sunflower Park Drive and Coachline Boulevard area.

Mayor Honea directed then-Police Chief Reuben Nunez to work with our citizen group. We met several times and worked with Chief Nunez and Town staff. Ultimately, two solar-powered flashing pedestrian signs and a curb cut-out across from Sunflower Park Drive were installed along Coachline. Later, I worked with Town staff on the replacement of metal barricades that had been plowed over near the El Rio Preserve parking area, separating The Loop from Coachline Boulevard, which are literally only a couple of feet apart at that location.

My Professional Background

My professional background consists of decades of radio and television experience, both on-air and behind the scenes, all across the country. I started as a local radio disc jockey, including at 13K-HIT, and later ran an AM-FM radio station combination in Safford, literally turning the stations on in the morning and off at night, while also serving as News and Sports Director.

I then returned to Tucson to work in radio as an anchor and reporter at KNST, covering city, county, crime, and many other types of news for years. I also worked at many other local radio stations in either news or disc jockey positions. I then moved into television news, working my way up through markets and positions, including management, main anchor, reporter, executive producer, and other roles in Texas, Colorado, Florida, Wisconsin, and Arizona. The larger markets included Dallas-Fort Worth, Tampa, Denver, and Green Bay.

In all of these positions, covering government-related news was always part of my job. I covered 9/11 in Tampa, with President George W. Bush just north in Sarasota, Central Command headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base, and the U.S. Coast Guard. I was part of team coverage of the Amber Hagerman kidnapping and murder in Arlington, Texas, the case for which the Amber Alert was created.

I covered a federal civil rights trial involving a notorious Green Bay murder case in Milwaukee, which involved charges of racial discrimination and impropriety by the Green Bay Police Department and resulted in changes to Wisconsin laws involving enhanced police operations transparency, accountability, training, and protocols for handling witness statements and evidence.

I also covered the murder of actress Rebecca Schaeffer by an obsessed fan who had stalked her for years. Then-Tucson Police Chief Peter Ronstadt arrested Robert John Bardo for Schaeffer’s murder literally in the middle of I-10. The case led to the nation’s first anti-stalking law in California and to federal law changes through the creation of the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, which prevents the DMV from disclosing personal information without consent.

I have interviewed Presidents, a Prime Minister, Vice Presidents, and numerous musical and other well-known people and celebrities. I came back to the Tucson area for family reasons and bought my house in Marana in 2003, where I have lived ever since.

Expanded Business Background

I have since held various positions with different companies in the area, including the now-defunct First Magnus Financial Corporation, Carondelet Health Network, and an environmental consulting firm that handles many state and federal government contracts. I took over my Dad’s business when he died, co-owned and operated the Fairfield, Iowa family farm for 12 years, and also developed and continue to run my own residential rental businesses, none of which are in Marana.

Regarding my involvement in large projects, an executive producer or news director position in any newsroom is a large, continual project.

I was one of two people responsible for vetting and licensing First Magnus Financial Corporation’s hundreds of mortgage brokers in all fifty states, and I was solely responsible for obtaining mortgage banking licenses for all of our branches throughout the country. I handled, solely, many very large projects, such as the change from Charter Funding to First Magnus Home Loans.

At Carondelet, I was the liaison between credentialed physicians, specifically at St. Joseph’s Hospital, where I worked in Compliance and Credentialing under the Carondelet network’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Donald Denmark, and the administration, meaning everyone in the C-suite. That included all Carondelet administrators, since I worked for the network CMO, and more than 890 physicians directly.

Conclusion and Personal Background

I understand the hierarchy, the relationships, and how local, state, and federal government operate. My experiences allow me to fully understand the intricacies of local government.

I am the granddaughter of an Iowa farmer and a former co-owner and operator of the long-time family farm. I relate to the concerns of more rural residents.

I am an avid cyclist, with 13 RAGBRAIs ridden so far, two gold medals in El Tour de Tucson, and various other rides and races. In Marana, I am involved with local animal rescue groups. I have fostered dogs, assisted others in humanely trapping dogs and cats, and currently have three rescue dogs and two personally rescued cats.

I graduated from Sabino High School in Tucson. My University of Arizona Bachelor’s degree is in Radio-Television, and my minor was in Business Administration.

As a Council member, Marana citizens would benefit from my knowledge, life experiences, investigative skills, and research skills. If I am not familiar with something or do not understand something, I research the information from all sides of the issue. I listen. I offer my services to the citizens of Marana, which include vast and far-reaching experiences in a variety of topics.