During a breakfast meeting last week, I picked up a copy of The Arizona Republic. It depressed me, but not for the reasons you might think.

As a second-generation newspaperman, I’m not happy about the Phoenix newspaper’s recent layoffs of veteran staff members. The Tucson Citizen, also owned by the Gannett Co., this month laid off some folks, too.

And I wish both the Republic and the Citizen had more pages for local, state, national and international news. Ditto for the Arizona Daily Star, which is owned by another company, Lee Enterprises.

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But what really depressed me while reading the Dec. 9 Republic were three news stories. I wished we could be reading the same news about Tucson.

Two of the stories were on page 1. The first was headlined “Valley foreclosures down” and said Phoenix-area lenders are finally working with borrowers to help them hold onto their homes. As a result, foreclosures during November were down 17 percent from October figures.

The second story said the new light rail system due to start running Dec. 27 is adding to financial problems for Phoenix, as well as Mesa, Tempe, Glendale, Peoria, Scottsdale, Chandler and others.

“For cities facing major budget problems, this is coming at a bad time,” the article said. “But they all say they can handle it.”

Repeat: “They all say they can handle it.”

City officials didn’t say paying for the Metro light rail system wasn’t their responsibility or warn that funding it would keep them from hiring more police officers.

They didn’t say they couldn’t afford to do what they had promised for light rail.

They didn’t even blame their tight finances on the legislature, Congress, the president or the president-elect.

Instead, officials of every city involved told the Republic they can make their Metro system work.

The third story in the Republic that day, was on the front page of the second section. It announced that more than 20 new bars and restaurants have opened in downtown Phoenix during the past two years. The CEO of the Downtown Phoenix Partnership said the 25 percent increase is “the biggest jump in recent memory.”

And although bar and restaurant sales declined 5.3 percent citywide from July to September, downtown Phoenix sales were up 1 percent.

You may recall that less than a year ago, the Cincinnati Reds baseball team was considering moving its spring training operations from Florida.

Officials of Goodyear, a comparatively small municipality in the Phoenix area, immediately told their town manager to drop many things he was working on and to seek exclusive negotiating rights with the Reds for spring training.

This fall, on a day when Tucson news media carried another disappointing story about the Chicago White Sox leaving Tucson for spring training in Glendale, a smaller baseball story also appeared.

It said - you guessed it - the Reds had agreed to move their spring training operations to Goodyear.

I e-mailed that story to local officials, noting that Goodyear clearly WANTED the Reds to come there, but efforts by Tucson and Pima County had been far less enthusiastic.

Only one official replied, saying we didn’t have a chance to get Cincinnati’s team.

Admittedly, Ohio connections that link the Reds, the Cleveland Indians and Goodyear Co. played a major role in Cincinnati’s decision.

But the city of Goodyear set a goal, went after it with gusto and succeeded. If officials hadn’t attracted the Reds, I suspect they would be actively pursuing other teams still training in Florida.

If local elected officials and business leaders want to rebuild Tucson’s downtown and hang onto our tourism and convention business, gem and mineral shows, spring training baseball, professional golf tournaments and other attractions for residents and visitors alike, they can.

But if government and business leaders don’t lead, can’t unite the community and don’t want to be bothered with local problems, we are all the losers.

We have to decide collectively that when times get tough, the tough do indeed get going.

Contact Steve Emerine or e-mail comments for publication to editor@azbiz.com. Emerine is a regular Monday guest on the John C. Scott radio talk show, which airs from 7 a.m. to 8 a.m. and from noon to 1 p.m. weekdays on The Voice KVOI 690-AM. This column appears weekly in Inside Tucson Business.