Growth is expected on the west side, extending to Sandario Road, but so is the cost of keeping up with it.

Whether it’s the City of Tucson, Pima County or the Pascua Yaqui Tribe that winds-up with the responsibility, the need to catch-up with the infrastructure needs of the new communities is an issue that dominates the thinking of governments in Southern Arizona. Speaking at the Metropolitan Pima Alliance’s annual Wild Ride luncheon May 3, Pima County Administrator Chuck Huckelberry and City of Tucson Manager Mike Hein agreed that infrastructure is the issue and paying for it is the question that needs to be answered.

“We always considered the far west side as a growth area,” Huckelberry said. “A few years ago, there were 29,000 people living here, by 2005 there were 40,000 and in the next 20 years, 80,000 or more. How it develops and what occurs will depend on whether we can overcome the deficit we have in services. This isn’t just roads, either, its overall infrastructure that needs to be built. It’s putting our heads together and finding the right mix to support the population that moves to this area.”

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Ready to work with Huckelberry is Pascua Yaqui Chairwoman Herminia Frias. While the tribe operates a casino and several businesses, she said, “everything we do requires us to work with the rest of the community.”

“We’re here to support economic development to support our people, but we also have to ask how what we do impacts the community where we live,” she said. “We all have the same goals. It’s our commitment to talk to other governments and work together so we can learn the best ways to move forward.”

Dealing with growth is also finding the level of sustainability, said Hein. “We need to anticipate growth.”

There are five or six jurisdictions on the west side, besides the city, county and Pascua Yaqui Tribe, there is the Bureau of Land Management, the Tohono O’odham Nation and Tucson Airport Authority.

“We all have different standards and ways of addressing growth. We need to bring them together and provide a level playing field where developers can understand what we want with clarity and certainty,” Hein said.

Governments also need to be certain that the cost of development isn’t ignored.

“There’s always an affordability issue. If we push up costs, we push housing to the outer ring, into Pinal and Santa Cruz counties,” he said.

Builders and developers need to work with city, county and other governments to “help us come to a clear and common denominator on how we treat development,” Hein said. “We’re in a position where we need to catch up and we need to plan ahead.”

E-mail comments for publication to editor@azbiz.com. Contact Philip S. Moore by e-mail at pmoore@azbiz.com or call (520) 295-4238.