Partly to mostly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 77F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph..

Partly to mostly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 77F. Winds SE at 5 to 10 mph.

Even if the economy tanks and businesses are laying off employees, Marana’s outlook is good, and it’s all due to one thing, said Mayor Ed Honea at Marana Chamber of Commerce’s Marana Insights meeting, held Aug. 25.

“The biggest asset the town has, it’s not the town hall or buildings or parks,” he said. 

“Our biggest asset as an entity is our (employees), and I just don’t see any cuts to our people.”

Honea, Northwest Fire District Chief Brad Bradley and Director of Economic Development and Tourism Curt Woody were the speakers at the morning event. 

Honea summarized where he feels Marana is at this moment. He also spoke about what he sees coming soon.

People want to move to Marana, he said. During the first three months of this year, Marana averaged 150 home starts per month. The applications for permits slowed down during the three most recent months to 50 or 60 permits for one reason only: supply chain issues.

“Our issues right now in the economy are not demand issues,” he said. “They’re supply issues…The biggest problem is builders can’t finish houses.” 

That includes trouble getting windows, bathtubs and hot water heaters, and although they can get roofing shingles, they cannot get the metal hangers to hang the shingles, Honea said. 

Despite these problems, the town is doing well. It is financially stable, but Honea is leading an effort to prepare for a possible recession. In 2007 and 2008, during the last recession, concessions had to be made, such as no overtime pay or travel to seminars and conventions on the town’s dime, but everyone kept their job.

Despite his optimism, Honea said should the economy turn downward, there is hope.

“I think we’re going to have a rough couple of years, but the benefit for all of you is you’re in Marana,” he said.

“We handled the last crisis pretty well and I think we’ll handle this one pretty well.”

However, Honea added, “We’re all going to have to start working together over the next few months because I see things tightening up quite a bit.”

In other Marana news, Honea is in favor of Proposition 491, a $90 million bond issue that has been floated to build, among other things, a K8 school in Gladden Farms in north Marana. He gave his reason.

“My philosophy is if we want young families to move here, and young families have children, if we don’t have good schools, they may not come,” Honea said. Voting on Prop 91 will take place in the Nov. 8 election.

The next speaker was Bradley, who gave a few statistics about Marana. It turns out the community is unique in many ways. 

“We’ve got a little bit more than 130,000 community members, 155 square miles, 56,000 residential homes, and a little bit over 3,000 commercial units,” he said. “There are 144 fire districts in the state of Arizona. Northwest Fire has the most commercial properties, the most businesses, of any fire district in the state.”

Bradley admitted that when he took over as chief four years ago, the fire department had a contentious relationship with town businesses. He has been working to change that.

“We were not very business-friendly; we were not very development-friendly, from the perspective of fire prevention services,” he said. “We have completely revisioned our fire prevention.”

In addition to working on the department’s relationship with businesses, Bradley said they have been working on fairly stringent certifications, including an international accreditation by the Commission of Fire Accreditation International. That means that industry experts from around the country come as a group and review everything about the department: all the training, policies and procedures. They are looking to see if the department does what it says it does and doing it with best practices and best interests of the community. Then there’s an interview process to validate it all.

“Most agencies don’t participate in the accreditation,” Bradley said. “It’s arduous; it’s grueling; it requires a commitment and dedication to continuous perfection.”

Marana’s fire department stands out in other ways as well. It takes a different approach, beginning with a survey sent out to the community every three years, asking how the department can better serve residents and commercial establishments. 

“As a result, every three years we modify and we change and we adjust,” he said.

Because of the work the department has done to be accredited, Bradley said everyone’s fire insurance costs have dropped.

For Curt Woody, director of development and tourism and the last to give a presentation, the word is growth. He said even with the talk of a downturn in the economy building is going on all over Marana. For example, in the North Tangerine Road area, about 1,000 homes are expected to go up. 

“Tangerine is the next golden goose for the town of Marana,” Woody said.

Other projects on Tangerine include:

A groundbreaking for two commercial/industrial buildings on the west side of I-10 and Tangerine that will become the Southern Arizona Logistics Center. 

The 80 acres at I-10 and Tangerine that Amazon was going to build on is now in escrow with another company. Woody said the sale will most likely go through. Although Amazon pulled out of the 1 million-square-foot building that was expected to be built there, the company still plans to open the facility at Ina and Silverbell. It is waiting for a new, state-of-the-art pulley system to be installed before it opens the facility in late fall or early next year.

Tangerine Road is in the design stage to be expanded to four lanes.

Woody understands the current economic forecast, but he still looks forward with hope.

“I’m going to call this cautious optimism,” he said. “Yes, we’re seeing a contraction in the economy. Yes, there’s talk about a recession coming, and even in the last recession, Marana didn’t do as bad as a lot of other people, not only in the state but the nation as well. We were still growing, and we will continue to grow. There are so many projects in the backlog right now that there is 18 months to 24 months of work still out there, not only on the residential side but the commercial side as well.”

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