As more citizens criticize Tucson’s lack of progress on the Rio Nuevo downtown redevelopment project, the mayor and council are beginning to hear them.

An Inside Tucson Business reader wrote after my "Rio Never" column last week that the city "is on a treadmill to oblivion." Another suggested officials are "in a hole and either should stop digging or throw away their shovels."

City Manager Mike Hein unexpectedly broke off talks with developer Humberto Lopez about buying his Hotel Arizona next to the Tucson Convention Center. Hein said Lopez wanted too much for it, so the city will work with another group on a new 700-room Sheraton hotel nearby.

And Mayor Bob Walkup said the city proposal to erect a giant tent atop the existing arena at the convention center for developer Allan Norville’s portion of the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show "is dead" because of its cost.

Curiously, the mayor’s comments were made off-microphone to radio talk show host John C. Scott after he had defended the tent-in-the-sky plan during an hour-long appearance June 6 on Scott’s program on the Voice KVOI 690-AM.

And finally, city officials jerked a proposal to buy Norville’s 6.7-acre parcel in the heart of the area proposed for a new convention hotel and arena from the June 10 City Council agenda. They said it would be considered a week later.

Norville is a former public relations client of mine, but I don’t know whether he and Hein officially agree on the $17 million price city staffers have mentioned for his land.

He reportedly wants assurance that quality facilities will be available next year and afterward for his gem show. If they’re not, he might rethink selling his land now.

Meanwhile Councilwoman Regina Romero complicated the picture last week by criticizing Hein’s decision to suspend work on museums and tourist attractions in her Ward 1, west of Interstate 10 and the Santa Cruz River.

The council supported her request for more frequent progress reports on the Tucson Origins area and assurances that facilities there will be built promptly.

Hein reminded council members (again) the city doesn’t have enough money to build everything they want west of the freeway in the next few years, plus a new hotel and arena on the east side of I-10.

Council members probably understand that, but like the citizenry, they want to see something built soon, somewhere.

Meanwhile, local daily newspaper and TV news staffs have let the Pima County Board of Supervisors off the hook on another project the county promised four years ago.

The voter-approved 2004 county bond package contained $183.5 million for "public safety and justice facilities," including an area-wide radio system so sheriff’s deputies, city and town police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians and other first responders can communicate quickly with each other during major crises.

The recent murder of Tucson Police Patrolman Erik Hite by a gun-wielding mad man reminded public servants and citizens alike the county has done almost nothing on the project since the bonds were approved.

Some public safety bond money has been spent for other projects, but not for the emergency radio system.

Police and sheriff’s spokespeople tactfully said when reporters asked them that even seamless radio communications probably would not have prevented Hite’s death.

But we will never know. Citizens are right to ask their county supervisors when the project will get under way - and how the county will finance the portion of its cost supervisors knew four years ago that the bonds would not cover.

Local news media should be asking the same questions of supervisors instead of meekly accepting feel-good assurances from uniformed spokespeople.

The longer the supervisors delay, the more the radios will cost and the more likely it will be that a first responder or citizen will die.

So far our county supervisors have shown they are more interested in using their bonding capacity to buy vacant land instead of bonds to make us safer.

Contact Steve Emerine or e-mail comments for publication to editor@azbiz.com. Emerine, a Tucson resident since 1960, has run Steve Emerine Strategic Public Relations since 1994. He is a former local newspaper reporter, editor and columnist and served as Pima County Assessor from 1973 to 1980. He is a regular Monday guest on the John C. Scott radio talk show, which airs from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. and from 11 a.m. to noon weekdays on The Voice KVOI 690-AM. This column appears weekly in Inside Tucson Business.

Emerine on TV

Steve Emerine will join the Reporters’ Roundtable segment of "Arizona Illustrated" at 6:30 p.m. Friday (June 20) on KUAT-TV 6. Scheduled to be interviewed are Greg Shelko, project director of Rio Nuevo, and Glen Lyons, chief executive of the Downtown Tucson Partnership.