Pity us poor Tucsonans. When we do what our city officials tell us to do, they often try penalize us for it.

Pick a topic, any topic. How about water?

Tucson Water customers are urged to “beat the peak” by not using much water during hours when other folks use it. We’re told to conserve water whenever we can and to support a city policy saying Tucson doesn’t have to serve water to customers outside the city limits if it doesn’t want to.

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So we water consumers go along and do all those things, then wham! We’re hit with a large headline in the morning newspaper proclaiming: “Tucson Water’s gap put at $15.4M.”

Saving water and refusing new customers has lowered water revenues by 6 percent this year.

Who could have guessed that would happen? Do you suppose we won’t have enough money now to paint over the graffiti we let those youngsters splash on the wall of Tucson Water’s downtown headquarters in December?

Tucson also has a garbage problem. The city has urged us to recycle more and throw away less. We’ve done that. The city is also messing with its certificate of occupancy regulations, making it harder for building owners to find new tenants.

Again, who would have thought that Tucsonans who can’t move into a building - or who take this recycling idea seriously - would generate less garbage than predicted? Or that the local market for recycled materials might dip?

Now city leaders may have to raise monthly garbage fees to teach us folks a lesson.

And then we have buses. For years, Tucson has been trying to get more people to use mass transit. Finally, when gas prices soared beyond $3 per gallon, some did stop driving and started riding Sun Tran buses.

Some city geniuses wanted to raise rates immediately. Fortunately, that plan was shelved.

But now, Sun Tran and Regional Transportation Authority officials want to spend nearly $3 million in the tightest budget year in decades to slap a new logo and new colors on the bus fleet.

Even if that were a good idea, it should be implemented gradually, putting the new logos and colors on equipment, stationery, signs, uniforms and business cards when new items are bought to replace things that we use up or wear out .

But transportation folks want to do it right now!

Let’s see. Tucson can’t fix pot holes very fast and supposedly can’t afford to train more than one class of police officers this year. But by golly, we’ll dazzle everyone with our new bus colors and a nifty logo!

I once was involved in a logo change for a rather large government entity.

As University of Arizona employees, Josh Young, Sharon Kha, Dottie Larson and I shepherded the selection of the classic “A” the university now uses, and we planned how to re-brand or change the identity of the institution.

We spent $35,000 for the design, plan and guidelines, and we implemented the project slowly. As UA employees used up existing stationery and cards, replaced their old vehicles and signs, and designed new publications and brochures, they adopted the new design. 

But even that modest approach angered some legislators. They made a big show near the end of their deliberations by cutting exactly $35,000 from the UA’s budget to show us their anger.

The UA survived that hit. Twenty years later, those logos and type fonts are everywhere, and most folks think the look is pretty classy for a large university.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I hope the new Sun Tran logo and colors someday become so cool that thousands of Tucsonans will put their cars up on cinder blocks and take a bus everywhere they go.

But if that happens, we’ll have to guard against yet another move to raise bus fares.

Many of Tucson’s elected and appointed officials seem to wholeheartedly embrace the idea of punishing citizens for doing what they’re told.

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 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.